About the Authors

USA TODAY bestselling author JENNIE LUCAS’s parents owned a bookstore and she grew up surrounded by books, dreaming about faraway lands. A fourth-generation Westerner, she went east at sixteen to boarding school on scholarship, wandered the world, got married, then finally worked her way through college before happily returning to her hometown. A 2010 RITA® Award finalist and 2005 Golden Heart® Award winner, she lives in Idaho with her husband and children.

TARA PAMMI can’t remember a moment when she wasn’t lost in a book—especially a romance, which was much more exciting than a mathematics textbook. Years later, Tara’s wild imagination and love for the written word revealed what she really wanted to do. Now she pairs Alpha males who think they know everything with strong women who knock that theory and them off their feet!

CATHY WILLIAMS was born in the West Indies and has been writing Mills & Boon romances for over fifteen years. She is a great believer in the power of perseverance, as she had never written anything before, and from the starting point of zero has now fulfilled her ambition to pursue this most enjoyable of careers. She would encourage any would-be writer to have faith and go for it! She lives in the beautiful Warwickshire countryside with her husband and three children, Charlotte, Olivia and Emma. When not writing she is hard-pressed to find a moment’s free time in between the millions of household chores, not to mention being a one-woman taxi service for her daughters’ neverending social lives. She derives inspiration from the hot, lazy, tropical island of Trinidad (where she was born), from the peaceful countryside of middle England and, of course, from her many friends, who are a rich source of plots and are particularly garrulous when it comes to describing her heroes. It would seem from their complaints that tall, dark, and charismatic men are too few and far between! Her hope is to continue writing romance fiction and providing those tales of eternal love for which, she feels, we all strive.

SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition by describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring often stubborn but always to die for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…

MICHELLE SMART’s love affair with books started when she was a baby, when she would cuddle them in her cot. A voracious reader of all genres, she found her love of romance established when she stumbled across her first Mills & Boon book at the age of twelve. She’s been reading (and writing) them ever since. Michelle lives in Northamptonshire with her husband and two young Smarties.

SUSAN STEPHENS was a professional singer before meeting her husband on the Mediterranean island of Malta. In true Mills & Boon style, they met on Monday, became engaged on Friday and married three months later. Susan enjoys entertaining, travel and going to the theatre. To relax she reads, cooks and plays the piano, and when she’s had enough of relaxing, she throws herself off mountains on skis or gallops through the countryside singing loudly.

Some people know practically from birth that they’re going to be writers. CATHERINE SPENCER wasn’t one of them. Her first idea was to be a nun, which was clearly never going to work! A series of other choices followed. She considered becoming a veterinarian (but lacked the emotional stamina to deal with sick and injured animals), a hairdresser (until she overheated a curling iron and singed about five inches of hair off the top of her best friend’s head the day before her first date), or a nurse (but that meant emptying bedpans. Eee-yew!). As a last resort, she became a high school English teacher, and loved it. What’s an English teacher’s area of expertise? Well, novels, among other things, and moody, brooding, unforgettable heroes: Heathcliff, Edward Fairfax Rochester, Romeo, Rhett Butler. They all pointed her in the same direction: breaking the rules every chance she got, and creating her own moody, brooding, unforgettable heroes. And where do they belong? In Mills & Boon novels, of course, which is where she happily resides now.

After spending three years as a die-hard New Yorker, KATE HEWITT now lives in a small village in the English Lake District with her husband, their five children and a golden retriever. In addition to writing intensely emotional stories, she loves reading, baking and playing chess with her son—she has yet to win against him, but she continues to try. Learn more about Kate at kate-hewitt.com

Canadian DANI COLLINS knew in high school that she wanted to write romance for a living. Twenty-five years later, after marrying her high school sweetheart, having two kids with him, working at several generic office jobs and submitting countless manuscripts, she got “The Call.” Her first Modern Romance novel won the Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best First in Series from RT Book Reviews. She now works in her own office, writing romance.

Award-winning author JENNIFER FAYE pens fun, heartwarming romances. Jennifer has won the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award, is a Top Pick author and has been nominated for numerous awards. Now living her dream, she resides with her patient husband, one amazing daughter (the other remarkable daughter is off chasing her own dreams) and two spoiled cats. She’d love to hear from you via her website: jenniferfaye.com

JENNIFER TAYLOR has written for several different Mills & Boon series but it wasn’t until she ‘discovered’ Medical Romances that she found her true niche. Jennifer loves the blend of modern romance and exciting medical drama. Widowed, she divides her time between homes in Lancashire and the Lake District. Her hobbies include reading, walking, travelling and spending time with her two gorgeous grandchildren.

MAISEY YATES is a USA TODAY bestselling author of more than thirty romance novels. She has a coffee habit she has no interest in kicking, and a slight Pinterest addiction. She lives with her husband and children in the Pacific Northwest. When Maisey isn’t writing she can be found singing in the grocery store, shopping for shoes online and probably not doing dishes. Check out her website: www.maiseyyates.com.

MAYA BLAKE’s hopes of becoming a writer were born when she picked up her first romance at thirteen. Little did she know her dream would come true! Does she still pinch herself every now and then to make sure it’s not a dream? Yes, she does!

Feel free to pinch her, too, via Twitter, Facebook or Goodreads! Happy reading!

SUSANNA CARR is an award-winning author known for her contemporary romances. Readers throughout the world find Susanna’s stories a delightful escape that has often helped them through difficult times. Reviewers frequently describe her work as ‘fun,’ ‘sexy’ and ‘a must read.’ When she isn’t writing or spending time with her family in the Pacific Northwest, Susanna enjoys reading romance and connecting with readers online. Visit her website at susannacarr.com.

JULIA JAMES lives in England and adores the peaceful, verdant countryside, and the wild shores of Cornwall. She also loves the Mediterranean, so rich in myth and history, its sun baked landscape and olive groves, ancient ruins and azure seas. “The perfect setting for romance! – rivalled only by the lush tropic heat of the Caribbean – palms swaying by a silver sand beach lapped by turquoise waters…what more could lovers want?!”

A bestselling two-time RITA® winner (with a further nine finalist titles), ANNE MCALLISTER has written nearly seventy books for Mills & Boon Modern Romance, American Romance, Desire, Special Edition and single titles—which means she basically follows her characters no matter where they take her. She loves to travel, but at home she and her husband divide their time between Montana and Iowa. Anne loves to hear from readers. Contact her at: www.annemcallister.com

MARGARET MAYO says most writers state they’ve always written and made up stories, right from a very young age. Not her! Margaret was a voracious reader but never invented stories, until the morning of June 14th 1974 when she woke up with an idea for a short story. The story grew until it turned into a full length novel, and after a few rewrites, it was accepted by Mills & Boon. Two years and eight books later, Margaret gave up full-time work for good. And her love of writing goes on!

ROBYN GRADY has sold millions of books worldwide, and features regularly on bestsellers lists and at award ceremonies, including The National Readers Choice, The Booksellers Best and Australia’s prestigious Romantic Book of the Year. When she’s not tapping out her next story, she enjoys the challenge of raising three very different daughters as well as dreaming about shooting the breeze with Stephen King during a month-long Mediterranean cruise. Contact her at www.robyngrady.com

SARAH MORGAN is a USA Today and Sunday Times bestselling author of contemporary romance and women’s fiction. She has sold more than 16 million copies of her books and her trademark humour and warmth have gained her fans across the globe. Sarah lives with her family near London, England, where the rain frequently keeps her trapped in her office. Visit her at www.sarahmorgan.com

USA Today Bestseller LUCY MONROE finds inspiration for her stories everywhere, as she is an avid people-watcher. She has published more than fifty books in several subgenres of romance and when she’s not writing, Lucy likes to read. She’s an unashamed book geek, but loves movies and the theatre too. She adores her family and truly enjoys hearing from her readers! Visit her website at: http://lucymonroe.com

MELANIE MILBURNE read her first Mills & Boon at age seventeen in between studying for her final exams. After completing a Masters Degree in Education she decided to write a novel and thus her career as a romance author was born. Melanie is an ambassador for the Australian Childhood Foundation and is a keen dog lover and trainer and enjoys long walks in the Tasmanian bush. In 2015 Melanie won the HOLT Medallion, a prestigious award honoring outstanding literary talent.

Mediterranean Mavericks Collection

Greek Mavericks: For the Greek’s Revenge

Jennie Lucas, Tara Pammi and Cathy Williams

Greek Mavericks: Winning the Enigmatic Greek

Sharon Kendrick, Michelle Smart and Tara Pammi

Greek Mavericks: The Greek’s Unforgettable Secret

Susan Stephens, Catherine Spencer and Kate Hewitt

Greek Mavericks: Giving Her Heart To The Greek

Dani Collins, Jennifer Faye and Jennifer Taylor

Greek Mavericks: At the Greek’s Pleasure

Maisey Yates, Maya Blake and Susanna Carr

Greek Mavericks: Seduced into the Greek’s World

Maisey Yates, Julia James and Anne McAllister

Italian Mavericks: New Year Temptation

Margaret Mayo, Robyn Grady and Sarah Morgan

Greek Mavericks: His Christmas Conquest

Cathy Williams, Lucy Monroe and Melanie Milburne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90631-3

MEDITERRANEAN MAVERICKS COLLECTION

The Consequence of His Vengeance © 2017 Jennie Lucas Claimed for His Duty © 2015 Tara Pammi Taken by Her Greek Boss © 2007 Cathy Williams The Pregnant Kavakos Bride © 2017 Sharon Kendrick The Greek’s Pregnant Bride © 2015 Harlequin Books S.A. Bought for Her Innocence © 2015 Tara Pammi The Secret Kept from the Greek © 2017 Susan Stephens The Giannakis Bride © 2008 Spencer Books Limited The Marakaios Baby © 2015 Kate Hewitt The Secret Beneath the Veil © 2016 Dani Collins The Greek’s Ready-Made Wife © 2016 Jennifer F. Stroka The Greek Doctor’s Secret Son © 2016 Jennifer Taylor The Greek’s Nine-Month Redemption © 2016 Maisey Yates A Diamond Deal with the Greek © 2016 Maya Blake Illicit Night with the Greek © 2016 Susanna Carr Carides’s Forgotten Wife © 2016 Maisey Yates Captivated by the Greek © 2015 Julia James The Return of Antonides © 2015 Anne McAllister Her Husband’s Christmas Bargain © 2004 Margaret Mayo Confessions of a Millionaire’s Mistress © 2008 Robyn Grady The Italian’s New-Year Marriage Wish © 2007 Harlequin Books S.A. At the Greek Tycoon’s Pleasure © 2006 Cathy Williams The Billionaire’s Pregnant Mistress © 2003 Lucy Monroe Never Gamble with a Caffarelli © 2013 Melanie Milburne

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

MILLS & BOON

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Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Greek Mavericks: For the Greek’s Revenge

The Consequence of His Vengeance

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Claimed for His Duty

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

Taken by Her Greek Boss

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Greek Mavericks: Winning the Enigmatic Greek

The Pregnant Kavakos Bride

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

The Greek’s Pregnant Bride

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

Bought for Her Innocence

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

Greek Mavericks: The Greek’s Unforgettable Secret

The Secret Kept from the Greek

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

The Giannakis Bride

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

The Marakaios Baby

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

Greek Mavericks: Giving Her Heart To The Greek

The Secret Beneath the Veil

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

The Greek’s Ready-Made Wife

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

EPILOGUE

The Greek Doctor’s Secret Son

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Greek Mavericks: At the Greek’s Pleasure

The Greek’s Nine-Month Redemption

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

A Diamond Deal with the Greek

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Illicit Night with the Greek

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

Greek Mavericks: Seduced into the Greek’s World

Carides’s Forgotten Wife

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

Captivated by the Greek

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

The Return of Antonides

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Italian Mavericks: New Year Temptation

Her Husband’s Christmas Bargain

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

Confessions of a Millionaire’s Mistress

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

The Italian’s New-Year Marriage Wish

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Greek Mavericks: His Christmas Conquest

At the Greek Tycoon’s Pleasure

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

The Billionaire’s Pregnant Mistress

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Never Gamble with a Caffarelli

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

About the Publisher

Greek Mavericks: For the Greek’s Revenge

The Consequence of His Vengeance

Jennie Lucas

Claimed for His Duty

Tara Pammi

Taken by Her Greek Boss

Cathy Williams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Consequence of His Vengeance

Jennie Lucas

His goal: entice, seduce, reject

Ten years ago, with her father arrested for fraud, Letty Spencer became the most hated ex-socialite in Manhattan, forced to push away the only man she’s ever loved. Now Darius Kyrillos is no longer just the poor chauffeur’s son and he’s come back to claim her!

Instead of slaking his thirst for vengeance, Darius was consumed by insatiable need the moment his lips touched Letty’s again. But he couldn’t have foreseen the consequence of his actions—soon he’ll be a father. Letty rejected him once; Darius won’t allow her to do so again!

To Pippa Roscoe, with best wishes for

a brilliant future. You are going to rock it!!

CHAPTER ONE

LETTY SPENCER HUNCHED her shoulders against the frosty February night as she pushed out of the Brooklyn diner, door swinging behind her. Her body was exhausted after her double shift, but not half as weary as her heart.

It had not been a good day.

Shivering in her threadbare coat, Letty lowered her head against the biting wind on the dark street. Snow flurries brushed against her exposed skin.

“Letitia.” The voice was low and husky behind her. Letty’s back snapped straight.

No one called her Letitia anymore, not even her father. Letitia Spencer had been the pampered heiress of Fairholme. Letty was just another New York waitress struggling to make ends meet for her family.

And that voice sounded like…

He sounded like…

Gripping her purse strap tight, she slowly turned around.

And lost her breath.

Darius Kyrillos stood against a glossy black sports car parked on the street. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, he was devastatingly handsome and powerful in his well-cut suit and black wool coat, standing beneath the softly falling snowflakes illuminated by a streetlight.

For a moment, Letty struggled to make sense of what her eyes were telling her. Darius? Here?

“Did you see this?” her father had said excitedly that morning, spreading the newspaper across their tiny kitchen counter. “Darius Kyrillos sold his company for twenty billion dollars!” He looked up, his eyes unfocused with painkillers, his recently broken arm awkward in a sling. “You should call him, Letty. Make him love you again.”

After ten years, her father had said Darius’s name out loud. He’d broken the unspoken rule. She’d fled, mumbling that she’d be late for work.

But it had affected her all day, making her clumsily drop trays and forget orders. She’d even dumped a plate of eggs and bacon on a customer. It was a miracle she hadn’t been fired.

No, Letty thought, unable to breathe. This was the miracle. Right now.

Darius.

She took a step toward him on the sidewalk, her eyes wide.

“Darius?” she whispered. “Is it really you?”

He came forward like a dark angel. She could see his breath beneath the streetlight like white smoke in the icy night. He stopped, towering over her. The light frosted his dark hair, leaving his face in shadow. She half expected him to disappear if she tried to touch him. So she didn’t.

Then he touched her.

Reaching out, he stroked a dark tendril that had escaped her ponytail, twisted it around his finger. “You’re surprised?”

At the sound of that low, husky voice, lightly accented from his early childhood in Greece, a deep shiver sent a rush of prickles over her skin. And she knew he wasn’t a dream.

Her heart pounded. Darius. The man she’d tried not to crave for the last decade. The man she’d dreamed about against her will, night after night. Here. Now. She choked out a sob. “What are you doing here?”

His dark eyes ran over her hungrily. “I couldn’t resist.”

As he moved his head, the streetlight illuminated his face. He hadn’t changed at all, Letty thought in wonder. The same years that had nearly destroyed her hadn’t touched him. He was the same man she remembered, the one she’d once loved with all her innocent heart, back when she’d been a headstrong eighteen-year-old, caught up in a forbidden love affair. Before she’d sacrificed her own happiness to save his.

His hand moved down to her shoulder. Feeling his warmth through her thin coat, she wanted to cry, to ask him what had taken so long. She’d almost given up hope.

Then she saw his gaze linger on her old coat, with its broken zipper, and her diner uniform, a white dress that had been bleached so many times it was starting to fray. Usually, she also wore unfashionable nylons to keep her legs warm while she was on her feet all day in white orthopedic shoes. But today, her last pair had been unwearable with too many rips, so her legs were bare.

Following his gaze, she blushed. “I’m not really dressed for going out…”

“Your clothes don’t matter.” There was a strange undercurrent in his voice. “Let’s go.”

“Go? Where?”

He took her hand in his own, palm to palm, and she suddenly didn’t feel the snowflakes or cold. Waves of electricity scattered helter-skelter across her body, across her skin, from her scalp to her toes.

“My penthouse. In Midtown.” He looked down at her. “Will you come?”

“Yes,” she breathed.

His sensual lips curved oddly before he led her to his shiny, low-slung sports car and opened the passenger door.

As Letty climbed in, she took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of rich leather. This car likely cost more than she’d earned the past decade waiting tables. She moved her hand along the fine calfskin, the color of pale cream. She’d forgotten leather could be so soft.

Climbing in beside her, Darius started the engine. The car roared away from the curb, humming through the night, leaving her neighborhood to travel through the gentrified areas of Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights before finally crossing the Manhattan Bridge into the New York borough that most catered to tourists and the wealthy: Manhattan.

All the while, Letty was intensely aware of him beside her. Her gaze fell upon his hand and thick wrist, laced with dark hair, as he changed gears.

“So.” His voice was ironic. “Your father is out of prison.”

Biting her lip, she looked at him hesitantly beneath her lashes. “A few days ago.”

Darius glanced back at her old coat and fraying uniform. “And now you’re ready to change your life.”

Was that a question or a suggestion? Did he mean that he wanted to change it? Had he actually learned the truth about why she’d betrayed him ten years ago?

“I’ve learned the hard way,” she said in a low voice, “that life changes, whether you’re ready or not.”

His hands tightened as he turned back to the steering wheel. “True.”

Letty’s eyes lingered on his profile, from the dark slash of eyebrows to his aquiline nose and full, sensual mouth. She still felt like she was dreaming. Darius Kyrillos. After all these years, he’d found her at the diner and was whisking her off to his penthouse. The only man she’d ever truly loved…

“Why did you come for me?” she whispered. “Why today, after all these years?”

His dark gaze was veiled. “Your message.”

She hadn’t sent any message. “What message?”

“Fine,” he murmured, baring his teeth in a smile. “Have it your way.”

Message? Letty felt a skitter of dark suspicion. Her father had wanted her to contact Darius. For the last few days, since he’d broken his arm in mysterious circumstances he wouldn’t explain, he’d been home on painkillers, sitting next to her ancient computer with nothing to do.

Could her father have sent Darius a message, pretending to be her?

She glanced at Darius, then decided she didn’t care. If her father had interfered, all she could be was grateful, if this was the result.

Her father must have revealed her real reasons for betraying Darius ten years ago. She couldn’t imagine he would even be talking to her now otherwise.

But how to know for sure?

Biting her lip, she said awkwardly, “I read about you in the paper this morning. That you sold. Your company, I mean.”

“Ah.” His jaw set as he turned away. “Right.”

His voice was cold. No wonder, Letty thought. She sounded like an idiot. She tried to steady herself. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you. It cost ten years of my life.”

Ten years. Those two simple words hung between them in silence, like a small raft on an ocean of regret.

Their car entered Manhattan, with all its wealth and savagery. A place she’d avoided since her father’s trial and sentencing almost a decade before.

Her heartbeat fluttered in her throat as she looked down at her chapped hands, folded tightly in her lap. “I’ve thought of you a lot, wondering how you were. Hoping you were well. Hoping you were happy.”

Stopping at a red light, Darius abruptly looked at her.

“It was good of you to think of me,” he drawled in a low voice, once again with that strange undercurrent. In the cold night of the city, headlights of passing cars moved shadows across the hard lines of his face.

The light changed to green. It was just past ten o’clock, and the traffic was starting to lessen. Heading north on First Avenue, they passed the United Nations plaza. The buildings had started climbing higher against the sky as they approached Midtown. Turning off Forty-Ninth onto the gracious width of Park Avenue, they approached a newly built glass-and-steel skyscraper on the south side of Central Park.

As he pulled his car into the porte cochere, she was craning her neck back in astonishment. “You live here?”

“I have the top two floors,” he said casually, in the way someone might say, I have tickets to the ballet.

His door opened, and he handed the keys to a smiling valet who greeted him respectfully by name. Coming around, Darius opened Letty’s door. He held out his hand.

She stared at it nervously, then put her hand in his.

He wrapped it tightly in his own. She felt the warmth and roughness of his palm against hers.

He had to know, she thought desperately. He had to. Otherwise, why would he have sought her out? Why wouldn’t he still hate her?

He led her through the awe-inspiring lobby, with its minimalist furniture and twenty-foot ceilings.

“Good evening, Mr. Kyrillos,” the man at the desk said. “Cold weather we’re having. Hope you’re staying warm!”

Darius held Letty’s hand tightly. She felt like she might catch flame as he drew her across the elegant, cavernous lobby. “I am. Thank you, Perry.”

He waved his key fob in front of the elevator’s wall panel and pressed the seventieth floor.

His hand gripped hers as the elevator traveled up. She felt the warmth of his body next to hers, just inches away, towering over her. She bit her lip, unable to look at him. She just stared at the electronic numbers displaying the floors as the elevator rose higher and higher. Sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy…

The bell dinged as the door slid open.

“After you,” Darius said.

Glancing at him nervously, she stepped out directly into a dark, high-ceilinged penthouse. He followed her, as the elevator door closed silently behind them.

The rubber soles of her white shoes squeaked against the marble floor as she walked through the foyer beneath the modern crystal chandelier above. She flinched at the noise, embarrassed.

But his handsome face held no expression as he removed his long black overcoat. He didn’t turn on any lights. He never looked away from her.

With a gulp, she turned away.

Gripping her purse strap, she walked forward into the shadowy main room. It was two stories high, with sparse, angular furniture in black and gray, and floor-to-ceiling windows twisted around the penthouse in every direction.

Looking from right to left, she could see the dark vista of Central Park, the high-rise buildings to the Hudson River, and the lights of New Jersey beyond it, and to the south, the skyscrapers of Midtown, including the Empire State Building, all the way to the Financial District and the gleaming One World Trade Center.

The sparkling nighttime view provided the only light in the penthouse, aside from a single blue gas fire that flickered in the stark fireplace.

“Incredible,” Letty breathed, going up to the windows. Without thinking, she leaned forward, putting her overheated forehead against the cool glass, looking down at Park Avenue far below. The cars and yellow cabs looked tiny, like ants. She felt almost dizzy from being so high off the earth, up in the clouds. It was a little terrifying. “Beautiful.”

His reply was husky behind her. “You are beautiful, Letitia.”

Turning, she looked at him in the soft blue glow of firelight. Then, as she looked more closely…

Her lips parted with an intake of breath.

She’d thought Darius hadn’t changed?

He’d changed completely.

At thirty-four, he was no longer a slender youth, but a powerful man. His shoulders had broadened to match his tall height, his body filling out with hard muscle. His dark hair had once been wavy and tousled, like a poet’s, but was now cut short, as severe as his chiseled jawline.

Everything about Darius was tightly controlled now, from the cut of his expensive clothes—a black shirt with the top button undone, black trousers, black leather shoes—to his powerful stance. His mouth had once been expressive and tender and kind. Now his lips had a hard twist of arrogance, even cruelty.

He towered over her like a king, in his penthouse with all of New York City at his feet.

At her expression, his jaw tightened. “Letitia…”

“Letty.” She managed a smile. “No one calls me Letitia anymore.”

“I have never been able to forget you,” he continued in a low voice. “Or that summer we were together…”

That summer. A small noise came from the back of her throat as unwanted memories filled her mind. Dancing in the meadow. Kissing the night after her debutante ball. Escaping the prying eyes of servants in Fairholme’s enormous garage, steaming up the windows of her father’s vintage car collection for weeks on end. She’d been ready to surrender everything.

Darius was the one who’d wanted to wait for marriage to consummate their love.

“Not until you’re my wife,” he’d whispered as they strained for each other, barely clothed, panting with need in the backseat of a vintage limousine. “Not until you’re mine forever.”

Forever never came. Their romance had been illicit, forbidden. She was barely eighteen, his boss’s daughter; he was six years older, the chauffeur’s son.

After a hot summer of innocent passion, her father had been infuriated when he’d discovered their romance. He’d ordered Darius off the estate. For one awful week he and Letty had been apart. Then Darius had called her.

“Let’s elope,” he’d said. “I’ll get a day job to support us. We’ll get a studio apartment in the city. Anything as long as we’re together.”

She’d feared it would hurt his dream of making his fortune, but she couldn’t resist. They both knew there was no chance of a real wedding, not when her father would try to stop the marriage. So they’d planned to elope to Niagara Falls.

But on the night his car waited outside the Fairholme gate, Letty never showed up.

She hadn’t returned any of his increasingly frantic phone calls. The next day, she’d even convinced her father to fire Eugenios Kyrillos, Darius’s father, who’d been their chauffeur for twenty years.

Even then, Darius had refused to accept their breakup. He’d kept calling, until she’d sent him a single cold message.

I was only using you to get another man’s attention. He’s rich and can give me the life of luxury I deserve. We’re engaged now. Did you really think that someone like me would ever live in a studio apartment with someone like you?

That had done the trick.

But it had been a lie. There had been no other man. At the ripe old age of twenty-eight, Letty was still a virgin.

All these years, she’d promised herself that Darius would never know the truth. He could never know how she’d sacrificed herself, so he’d be able to follow his dreams without guilt or fear. Even if it meant he hated her.

But Darius must have finally found out the truth. It was the only explanation for him seeking her out.

“So you know why I betrayed you ten years ago?” she said in a small voice, unable to meet his eyes. “You forgive me?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said roughly. “You’re here now.”

Her heart pounded as she saw the dark hunger in his eyes.

She looked down at the coffee stain on her uniform, the smear of ketchup near the cheerful name tag still on her left breast: LETTY! She whispered, “You can’t still…want me?”

“You’re wrong.” He pulled her handbag off her shoulder. It felt unspeakably erotic. He pulled off her coat, dropping it to the marble floor. “I wanted you then.” Cupping her face with both hands, he whispered, “I want you now.”

Electricity ran up and down her body. Involuntarily, she licked her lips.

His gaze fell to her mouth.

Tangling his hands in her hair, he pulled out her ponytail, and her long dark hair tumbled down her shoulders. He stroked down her cheek, tilting back her head.

He was so much taller. He towered over her in every way.

She felt crazy butterflies, like she’d gone back in time and was eighteen again. Being with him now, all the anguish and grief and weariness of the last ten years seemed to disappear like a bad dream.

“I’ve missed you for so long,” she choked out. “You’re all I’ve dreamed about…”

He pressed a finger to her lips. At the contact, fire flashed from her mouth and down to her breasts. Sparks crackled between them in the shadowy penthouse, as she breathed in his woodsy, musky scent. Tension coiled low and deep in her belly.

Pulling her body tight against his own, he lowered his mouth to hers.

His kiss was hot and demanding. The stubble on his rough jawline scratched her delicate skin as he gripped her hard against him. She kissed him back with desperate need.

A low growl came from the back of his throat, and he pushed her back against the wall. His hands ran down her body to rip apart the front buttons of her white dress. She gasped as her naked skin was exposed, along with her plain white bra and panties.

“Take this off,” he whispered, and he pulled her white dress off her body, dropping it to the floor. Kneeling in front of her, he pulled off her white shoes, one by one. She was nearly naked, standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that revealed the whole city.

Rising to his full height, he kissed her. His mouth plundered hers, searing her to the core. She realized her hands were unbuttoning his black shirt to feel the warmth of his skin, the hard muscles of his body. She stroked his chest, dusted with dark hair, and trembled. He felt like steel wrapped in satin, hard and soft.

She desperately wanted to feel him against her, all of him. She wanted to be lost in him—

As he kissed her, his hands roamed over her shoulders, her hips, her breasts. Her fingers twisted in his hair. She felt dizzy with longing as he pressed her against the wall, kissing her with savage desire, nipping at her lips until they bruised.

He kissed down her throat, reaching beneath the white cotton fabric of her bra to cup her bare breasts. She felt his rough warm hands against her naked skin, and her taut nipples ached, until with a low curse he reached around and unhooked the clasp of her bra.

She heard his intake of breath as it fell to the floor. She now wore only panties, while he was still fully dressed, with his black shirt unbuttoned to reveal his bare chest. As he lowered his head, taking her exposed breasts fully in his hands, her head fell back, hair tumbling down, as she gripped his bare, muscular shoulders.

She gasped as she felt the wet heat of his mouth envelop a taut nipple. Lightning shot down her body as he suckled her in his stark, shadowy penthouse, with its spectacular view of nighttime New York at their feet. She moaned softly.

Abruptly, he pulled away. She opened her eyes, feeling dizzy. Her lips parted to ask a question, but before she could remember it, he lifted her into his arms.

She didn’t try to resist as he carried her through the great room into an enormous bedroom in the opposite corner. That, too, had windows on both sides, twenty feet high. She could see all of Midtown, from the Chrysler Building to the Empire State, a forest of skyscrapers between two dark rivers with their bright, moving barges.

Manhattan sparkled coldly in the dark night as Darius spread her across his bed, his expression half shadowed. He undid his cuffs and dropped his shirt to the floor.

For the first time, Letty saw the full strength of his hard-muscled torso and powerful arms. His shoulders were broad, narrowing to tight, hard abs. Removing his belt, he kicked off his shoes. Wearing just low-slung black tailored trousers, he climbed onto the bed.

Lowering his head, he kissed her against the pillows, his lips hard and rough. She felt his desire for her; she felt his heavy weight over her. Darius wanted her… He cared…

Something broke, deep inside her heart.

All this time, Letty had thought their love had ended forever. But nothing had changed, she thought in wonder, tangling her hands in his dark hair. Nothing. They were the same two people, still young and in love…

He slowly kissed his way down her body, his hands stroking her. She quivered, helpless beneath his touch. He dropped kisses here and there as he traversed the softness of her belly to the top edge of her white cotton panties. Drawing up, he looked down at her.

“You’re mine, Letty,” he whispered. “At last.”

Then his heavy, hard body crushed hers deliciously, sensually. Her fingertips moved down the warm skin of his back, feeling his muscle, his spine. He moved his hips against hers, and she felt how huge and hard he was for her. Desire coiled low and deep in her belly.

He slid her white cotton panties down her thighs, down her legs. Like a whisper, they were gone.

Pushing her legs apart, he knelt at the foot of the bed. She held her breath, squeezing her eyes shut in the shadowy bedroom as he kissed the tender hollow of each foot. He moved up her calves, his fingertips caressing her skin as he lifted each knee for a slow kiss in the hollow beneath. She shivered as she felt the warmth of his breath on her thighs.

His hands moved beneath her, cupping her backside. Her thighs melted beneath his breath, hips trembling.

Finally, with agonizing slowness, he lowered his head between her legs.

Moving his hands, he kissed her inner thighs, one then the other. She felt his breath against the most intimate part of her and tried to squirm away, but he held her firmly.

Spreading her wide, he took a long, deep taste. The pleasure was intense. She choked out a gasp.

Holding her hips down against the bed, he forced her to accept the pleasure, working her with his tongue, twirling against her aching nub for long exquisite moments, then lapping her with the full width of his tongue.

She forgot to breathe, held by ruthless pleasure like a butterfly pinned to a wall. Her hips lifted involuntarily off the bed as she soared, and she gripped the white bedspread so she didn’t fly up into the sky.

Waves of pleasure crashed against radiating joy. She’d never stopped loving him. And now he’d forgiven her. He wanted her. He loved her, too…

Twisting and gasping beneath his mouth, she exploded with a cry of pure happiness that seemed to last forever.

Instantly lifting his body, he pushed her arms above her head, gripping her wrists against the pillow, and positioned his hips between her legs. As she was still soaring between ecstasy and joy, he ruthlessly impaled her.

She felt him push all the way inside her, the entire enormous length of him going deep, to the heart. Her eyes flew open in shock and pain.

His back straightened at the moment he tore through the barrier that he clearly had not expected. Feeling her flinch, he looked down at her in shock.

“You were—a virgin?” he panted.

She nodded, closing her eyes and twisting her head away so he couldn’t see the threatening tears. She didn’t want to mar the beauty of their night, but the pain cut deep.

He held himself still inside her.

“You can’t be,” he said hoarsely. “How, after all these years?”

Letty looked up at him, her throat aching. And she said the only thing she could say. The words that she’d repressed for ten years, but that had never stopped burning inside her.

“Because I love you, Darius,” she whispered.

CHAPTER TWO

DARIUS STARED DOWN at her. Letitia Spencer, a virgin?

Impossible. Not in a million years.

But her words shocked him even more.

“What do you mean, you love me?” he choked out.

Her dark eyelashes trembled against her pale skin. Then those big, beautiful hazel eyes shone up at him from the shadows of the bed as she whispered, “I never stopped loving you.”

Looking down at her beautiful heart-shaped face, Darius was overwhelmed by emotion. Not the good kind, either.

He felt the cold burn of slow-rising rage.

Once, he’d loved Letty Spencer so much he’d thought he’d die without her. She’d been his angel. His goddess. He’d put her on such a pedestal, he’d even insisted they wait to make love. He’d wanted to marry her.

The memory made him writhe with shame.

How far she’d fallen. Today, she’d sent him a message—her first direct communication with him since she’d dumped him so coldly ten years before—offering him her body. For money.

All afternoon, Darius had tried to ignore her message, to laugh it off. He’d gotten over Letty years ago. He wasn’t interested in paying a hundred thousand dollars to have her in his bed tonight. He didn’t pay for sex. Women fought for his attention now. Supermodels fell into his bed for the price of a phone call.

But the part of him that still couldn’t completely forget the past relished the idea of seeing her one last time.

Only this time, she’d be the one begging. He’d be the one to reject her.

As he’d signed the contracts that afternoon to formally sell his company, built on a mobile messaging app with five hundred million users worldwide, to a massive tech conglomerate for the price of twenty billion dollars, he’d barely listened to his lawyers droning on. Holding 90 percent of equity in the company made him the beneficiary of an eighteen-billion-dollar fortune, minus taxes.

But instead of rejoicing in the triumphant payoff of ten years of relentless work, he’d been picturing Letitia, the woman who’d once betrayed him. Imagining her trying to seduce him with an exotic dance of the seven veils. Picturing her wearing nothing but a black negligee. Begging him to take her to bed, so she could perform Olympic-level sexual feats for his pleasure.

After the papers were signed, he practically ran out of the office, away from all the congratulations and celebrations. All he could think about was Letty and her offer.

He’d spent hours trying to talk himself out of it. Then, gritting his teeth, he’d driven to the Brooklyn diner when the message said she’d be getting off work.

He didn’t intend to actually sleep with her, he told himself. He’d only wanted to make her feel as small and ashamed as he’d once felt. To see her humiliated. To see her beg to give him pleasure.

Then he’d planned to tell her he no longer found her attractive, and toss the money in her face. He’d watch her take it and slink away in shame. And for the rest of his life he’d know that he’d won.

What did he care about a hundred thousand dollars? It was nothing. It would be worth it to see her abject humiliation. After her savagely calculated betrayal, he craved vengeance far more than sex.

Or so he’d thought.

But so far nothing had gone according to plan. Seeing her outside the diner, he’d been shocked at her appearance. She didn’t look like a gold digger. She looked as if she were trying to be invisible, with no makeup, wearing that ridiculous white diner uniform.

But even then, he’d been drawn to her. She managed to be so damn sexy, so sweetly feminine and warm, that any man would want to help her, to take care of her. To possess her.

Bringing her back to the penthouse to enjoy his vengeance, Darius had allowed himself a single kiss.

Big mistake.

As he’d felt the soft curves of her body press against his, all his plans for vengeance were forgotten against the ruthless clamor of his body. For ten years, he’d desired this woman; and now she was half-naked in his arms, willing to surrender everything.

Suddenly, it all came down to two simple facts.

She’d sold herself.

He’d bought her.

So why not take her? Why not enjoy her sensual body as a way to finally excise her memory, once and for all?

She’d lied her way through the evening, pretending it was a romantic date, instead of a commercial transaction. He’d almost been surprised.

Until now.

Naked beneath him, Letty looked up, her eyes luminous in that lovely face he’d never been able to forget.

“Say something,” she said anxiously.

Darius set his jaw. After her heartless betrayal, followed by ten years of silence, she’d just told him out of the blue she loved him. What could he say in response? Go to hell?

Letitia Spencer. So beautiful. So treacherous. So poisonous.

But now, at last, he understood her goal. She wasn’t just playing for a hundred thousand dollars tonight. No. Tonight was just the sample that was supposed to leave him wanting more.

Because he’d seen her face as she left that diner. She was tired. Tired of working. Tired of being poor. Perhaps her father, newly free from prison, had been the one to suggest how to easily change her life—by becoming Darius’s wife.

She must have seen his company’s sale trumpeted in the newspaper today and decided it was time she made a play for his billions. He almost couldn’t blame her. She’d been holding on to her virginity all these years—why not cash in?

She loved him.

Cold, sardonic anger pulsed through him.

She thought he’d learned nothing all these years. She actually thought, if she told him she loved him, he would still swoon at her feet. That he was still the lovesick idiot of long ago.

If Darius had despised her before, it was nothing compared to how he felt about her now.

And yet, he still desired her. Holding himself motionless inside her hot, tight sheath, he was still so hard, he was close to exploding.

That fact enraged him even more.

He wanted to make her pay. Not just for this last insult, but for everything that had gone before. Suddenly, causing her one night of humiliation wasn’t nearly enough.

Darius wanted vengeance.

He wanted to raise her up, give her hope, then bring it crashing down as she’d once done. Fantastical plans coursed through his skull. He wanted to marry her, fill her with his child. He wanted to make her love him, then coldly spurn her. He wanted to take everything, and leave her penniless and alone.

That wouldn’t be revenge. It would be justice.

“Darius?” A shadow of worry had crossed her face as she looked up at him, naked on the bed.

Lowering his head, he kissed her almost tenderly. She trembled in his arms, her plump breasts crushed against his naked chest, her amazing hips spread wide for him. Seeing her stretched out on his bed, with the play of shadows and light on the sexy curves of her tantalizing breasts, stretched the limits of his self-control.

“I’m sorry I hurt you, agape mou,” he said in a low voice. Lie. His lips brushed the sensitive flesh of her cheek. As lightly as a butterfly setting down, he kissed the two tears that had overflowed her lashes. “But the pain won’t last.” Another lie. He would make sure it lasted the rest of her life. He smiled grimly. “Just wait.”

She looked up at him, the picture of wide-eyed innocence. Then sighed, relaxing in surrender.

The kiss he gave her then was anything but tender. It was demanding, rough, fierce. He had experience, and she did not. He knew how to lure her. How to master her.

Unless—she could be feigning her desire?

No, he thought coldly. He would make sure she did not. That would be one insult he’d not allow her to pay. He would make sure every bit of her pleasure was real.

He stroked her soft body, taking his time, caressing her, until, slowly, she started kissing him back.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulling his weight back down on her. He shifted his hips, testing her ability to accept him, still rock hard and huge inside her. She whimpered, then exhaled, swaying her hips.

He moved expertly, drawing back slowly, then pushing inside her a second time. She gripped his shoulders, closing her eyes. He suckled a nipple, watching her face carefully. It wasn’t until he saw the glow of ecstasy return to her face, and felt her muscles start to tighten around him, that he knew he’d succeeded. Triumph filled him as he began to ride her.

Filling her so deeply, this woman he’d desired for almost a third of his life, he felt light-headed. His body started to shake with pleasure so intense that it was almost like pain. They were so intertwined it was hard to know where one ended and the other began.

Pleasure and pain.

Hatred and desire.

As he thrust into her, sweat covered his body with the effort of keeping control. Her breasts swayed as he thrust inside her, all the way to the hilt. Gasping, she put her hands against the headboard, bracing against the force of his thrust. Her breathing became shallow as her body twisted beneath him with building need.

Her eyes were closed, her head tilted back, as she panted for breath. She moved her hands to his shoulders. He barely noticed her fingernails digging into his skin. He was lost in the sensation of possessing her, filling her, owning her, the glory of her flesh, the sweetness of her skin.

He felt simultaneously lost and found. Every corner of his soul that had ever felt hollow was miraculously filled. His body was pure light.

From a distance, he heard a low ragged shout and realized the sound was coming from his own mouth, releasing emotion he’d kept locked up for a decade. Her voice joined his as she cried out her own joy and grief and pain.

His body spasmed with a final, violent thrust and he poured himself into her, collapsing over her on the bed, their bodies slick with sweat, fused together.

It was much later when he opened his eyes and discovered Letty was sleeping in his arms. He stared down at her in wonder.

He wondered how he’d ever been satisfied by those pallid, skinny supermodels who had filled his bed till now. Those affairs had been insipid, hollow, dull compared to this fire. Tasting her, feeling her shake, hearing her cry of pleasure had pushed him to the limit.

It’s hatred, he realized.

Hatred had made him utterly lose self-control in a way he’d never done before, in a way he’d never imagined possible. As he’d taken possession of her body, after ten years of frustrated desire, he’d slaked his ache in a dark, twisted fantasy of vengeance.

It had been the single best sexual experience of his life.

But as he pulled away from her, he sucked in his breath.

The condom had broken.

He’d worn one, of course. No matter how he might fantasize about revenge, no matter how much he hated her, the last thing he would want was to actually get her pregnant and drag an innocent child into this.

Now he stared down, unable to believe his own eyes. How could the condom have broken?

Had he been too rough, forgetting everything in his need to possess her, to relieve the savage, unrequited desire of ten years?

He’d wanted to brand her forever with the deepest mark of his possession. Had he actually wanted to fill her with his child?

A curse filled his heart.

Unraveling himself from her, he pulled away, rising naked from the bed.

He walked to the window and looked down at the bright skyscrapers of this dark city. His throat was tight as he pressed his hand against the cold glass. Catching his own reflection in the window, he was startled by the cold rage in his eyes.

Disaster. He hadn’t done anything like he’d planned. He’d actually slept with Letty. And now…it might be so much worse. His hand tightened against the window. He looked back, and his jaw tightened.

Her fault, he thought. All hers.

“Are you up?” Letty murmured. “Come back to bed.”

She was beneath the blankets now, looking sleepy and adorable with her dark hair tumbling over his pillows. She’d covered herself with the comforter. As if he hadn’t seen everything, touched everything, tasted everything already.

His body hardened against his will, already desiring her again. He’d just had her, and he already wanted more. He wanted to take her on the bed. Against the wall. Against the window. Again and again. He stared at her in bewildered fury. Truly she was poison.

But did he really imagine after everything that had gone wrong tonight, the gold digger couldn’t achieve her ultimate goal—marriage and total command, not just of his fortune, but of his body and soul?

He clawed a hand through his hair.

“Darius, what’s wrong?”

He repeated flatly, “You love me?”

“It’s true,” she whispered.

He took a step toward the bed.

“What is it, Letty?” he said in a low voice. “Did you plan all along to renegotiate the deal? One night isn’t enough, is that it? You don’t want to be a rental, but a permanent sale?”

She frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Darius’s jaw felt so tight it ached. Grabbing gray sweatpants from a sleek built-in drawer, he pulled them up over his naked body. He forced his shoulders to relax, forced himself to face her. When he spoke, his voice was like ice.

“You don’t love me. You don’t even know what the word means. When I think of how I once adored you, it sickens me. Especially now—now we both know what you really are.”

Her forehead creased. “What are you talking about?”

“This night. This whole night. Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

“I don’t!”

“Don’t play the outraged innocent. You sold your virginity to me for the price of a hundred thousand dollars.”

For a moment, his hard words echoed in the shadowy bedroom. The two of them stared at each other in silence.

“What are you talking about?”

“Your email,” he said impatiently. “Claiming you needed to pay off some mobster who’d broken your father’s arm and threatened to break his whole body if he didn’t come up with a hundred thousand dollars within the week.” He tilted his head curiously. “Is it true? Or just a convenient excuse?”

Her eyes were wide. “My father’s broken arm…” She seemed to shudder as she pulled the blankets up higher against her neck. “I never sent any message.”

His lips curved sardonically. “So who did?”

Letty’s cheeks were bright red. “I…” Running her hand over her eyes, she said, “So that’s why you came for me? You were buying a night in bed?”

“What did you think?”

“I thought…” She faltered. “I thought you’d forgiven me for what I did…”

He snorted. “Ten years ago? You did me a favor. I’ve been better off without you. Your other fiancé must have realized that fast, since he didn’t bother to stick around, either.” His jaw set. “What I’ll never forgive is what you and your father did to my dad. He died an early death because of you. Lost his job, his life savings. He lost everything, had a heart attack and died.” He bared his teeth in a sharklike smile. “Because of you.”

“Darius, it’s not what you think,” she blurted out. “I…”

“Oh, is this the part where you come up with an explanation that makes you look like an innocent saint?” he drawled. “Go on, Letty. Tell me how your betrayal was actually a favor. Explain how you destroyed my family at great personal sacrifice, because you loved me so much.” His voice dripped contempt. “Tell me all about your love.”

She opened her mouth.

Then snapped it closed.

Darius’s lip twisted coldly. “That’s what I thought.”

She blinked fast, her beautiful eyes anguished. She took a deep breath and spoke one small word. “Please…”

But mercy had been burned from his soul. He shrugged. “I thought it would be amusing to see you again. I didn’t actually intend to sleep with you, but you were so willing, I finally thought, why not?” He sighed as if bored. “But though I paid for the whole night, I find I’ve already lost interest.” Leaning forward, he confided, “And just as one entrepreneur to another, you sold yourself too cheaply. You could have bartered for a higher price with your virginity. Just a suggestion as you go forward with your new career. What is it called now? Paid mistress? Professional girlfriend?”

“How can you be so cruel?” She shook her head. “When you came to the diner tonight, I saw the same boy I loved…”

“Really?” He tilted his head, quirking a dark eyebrow. “Oh. Right. Since you’d kept your virginity in reserve all these years, you thought if you tossed in a little romance, I’d fall for you like a stone, just like I did back then. ‘I love you, Darius. I never stopped loving you,’” he mimicked mockingly.

“Stop!” she cried, covering her ears with her hands. “Please stop!”

Some of her blanket had slipped where she sat on his bed, revealing a curvy breast. He could see the faint pink tip of her nipple, and he could still taste the sweetness of her, still remember how it had felt to be deep inside her.

His breath came hard. Sleeping with her hadn’t satiated his desire. To the contrary. He only wanted her more.

The fact she still had such power over him was infuriating.

Turning sharply, he went to his desk. He pulled a cashier’s check from a leather binder. Returning to the bed, he tossed it toward her.

“There. I believe this concludes our business.”

Letty’s lovely face looked dazed as she picked up the cashier’s check from the bed. She looked at it.

“If you have another client tonight, don’t let me keep you,” he drawled.

She briefly closed her eyes and whispered, “You’re a monster.”

“I’m a monster.” He barked a low, cruel laugh. “Me?”

Turning away, she rose naked from the bed. He waited, wondering for a split second if she’d toss the check in his face and prove him wrong. If she did…

But she didn’t. She just picked up her panties from the floor and walked to the door. He sneered at himself for being naive enough to even imagine the possibility she’d give up her hard-earned money for the sake of honor, or even pride!

She left the bedroom, going out into the great room of the penthouse. He followed, watching as she collected her bra and shoes, then scooped her white dress from the floor. Putting it on after slipping on her panties, she buttoned the dress quickly, leaving gaps where he’d ripped off buttons in his haste to get it off her. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Darius wanted to force her to look at him. He wanted her humiliated. He wanted her heartbroken. His pride demanded something he couldn’t name. More.

She stuffed her bra in her handbag and put her bare feet into her shoes and turned to go.

“It’s just a shame the condom broke,” he said.

She froze. “What?”

“The condom. Of course I was wearing one. But it broke. So if you wind up pregnant, let me know, won’t you?” He gave a hard smile. “We will negotiate a good price.”

He was rewarded. She finally turned and looked at him, aghast.

“You’d pay me? For a baby?”

He said coldly, “Why not, when I paid you for the act that created it?” His expression hardened. “I will never marry you, Letty. So your attempt at gold digging ends with that check in your bag. If by some unfortunate chance you become pregnant, selling me our baby would be your only option.”

“You’re crazy!”

“And you disgust me.” He came closer to her, his eyes cold. “I would never allow any child of mine to be raised by you and that criminal you call a father. I would hire a hundred lawyers first,” he said softly, “and drive you both into the sea.”

For a moment, Letty looked at him, wide-eyed. Then she turned away with a stumble, but not before he saw the sheen of tears in her eyes. She’d become quite the little actress, he thought.

“Please take me home,” she whispered.

“Take you home?” Darius gave a sardonic laugh. “You’re an employee, not a guest. A temporary employee whose time is now done.” His lip curled. “Find your own way home.”

CHAPTER THREE

LETTY SHIVERED IN the darkest, coldest hours of the night as she walked to the Lexington Avenue subway station and got on the express train. It was past one in the morning, and she held her bag tightly in the mostly empty compartment, feeling vulnerable and alone.

Arriving at her stop in Brooklyn, she came numbly down the stairs from the elevated station and walked the blocks to her apartment. The streets were dark, the shops all closed. The February—no, it was March now; it was past midnight—wind was icy against her cheeks still raw with tears.

She’d thought it was a miracle when she saw Darius again. She’d thought he’d found out the truth of how she’d sacrificed herself, and he’d come back for her.

Telling him she loved him had felt so right. She’d honestly thought he might tell her the same thing.

How could she have been so wrong?

You disgust me.

She could still hear the contempt in his voice. Wiping her eyes hard, she shivered, trembling as she trudged toward her four-story apartment building.

While many of the nearby buildings were nice, well kept, with flower boxes, hers was an eyesore, with a rickety fire escape clinging to a crumbling brick facade. But the place was cheap, and the landlord had asked no personal questions, which was what she cared about. Plugging in a security code, Letty pushed open the door.

Inside, the temperature felt colder. Two of the foyer’s lights were burned out, leaving only a single bare lightbulb to illuminate the mailboxes and the old delivery menus littering the corners of the cracked tile floor.

Even in the middle of the night, noises echoed against the concrete stairwell, a Doppler tangle of tenants yelling, dogs barking, a baby crying. A sour smell came up from beneath the metal stairs as she wearily climbed three flights. She felt wretched, body and soul, torn between her body’s sweet ache from their lovemaking and her heart’s incandescent grief.

The fourth floor had worn, stained carpet and a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Going past the doors of her neighbors—some of whom she’d never met even after three years—she reached into her handbag, found her keys and unlocked the dead bolt. The door creaked as she pushed it open.

“Letty! You’re back!” Her father looked up eagerly from his easy chair. He’d waited up for her, wrapped in both a robe and a blanket over his flannel pajamas, since the thermostat didn’t work properly. Turning off the television, he looked up hopefully. “Well?”

As the door swung shut behind her, Letty stared at him in disbelief. Her handbag dropped to the floor.

“How could you?” she choked out.

“How could I get you and Darius back together so easily?” Her father beamed at her. “All I needed was a good excuse!”

Her voice caught on a sob. “Are you kidding?”

Howard frowned. “Are you and Darius not back together?”

“Of course we’re not! How could you send him a message, pretending to be me? Offering me for the night!”

“I was trying to help,” he said falteringly. “You’ve loved him for so long but refused to contact him. Or he you. I thought…”

“What? That if you forced us together, we’d immediately fall back into each other’s arms?”

“Well, yes.”

As she stared at him, still trembling from the roller coaster of emotion of that night, anger rushed through her.

“You didn’t do it for me!” Reaching into her bag, she grabbed the cashier’s check and shoved it at him. “You did it for this!”

Her father’s hands shook as he grasped the cashier’s check. Seeing the amount, his eyes filled with visible relief. “Thank God.”

“How could you?” She wanted to shake her father and scream at him for what he’d done. “How could you sell me?”

“Sell you?” Her father looked up incredulously. “I didn’t sell you!” Struggling to untangle himself from his blanket, he rose from his chair and sat beside her on the sofa. “I figured the two of you would talk and soon realize how you’d been set up. I thought you’d both have a good laugh, and it would be easier for you each to get over your pride. Maybe he’d send money, maybe he wouldn’t.” His voice cracked. “But either way, you’d be together again. The two of you love each other.”

“You did it for love.” Letty’s eyes narrowed skeptically. “So the fact that you read about Darius’s billion-dollar deal this morning had nothing to do with it.”

He winced at her sarcasm, then looked down at the floor. His voice trembled a little as he said, “I guess I thought there was no harm in also trying to solve a problem of my own with a…dissatisfied customer.”

Glaring at him, Letty opened her mouth to say the cruel words he deserved to hear. Words she’d never be able to take back. Words neither one of them would ever be able to forget. Words that would take her anguish and rage, wrap them up into a tight ball and launch them at her father like a grenade.

Then she looked at him, old and forlorn, sitting beside her on the sagging sofa. The man she’d once admired and still absolutely loved.

His hair had become white and wispy, barely covering his spotted scalp. His face, once so hearty and handsome, was gaunt with deep wrinkles on his cheeks. He’d shrunk, become thin and bowed. His robe was too big on him now. His near decade in prison had aged him thirty years.

Howard Spencer, a middle-class kid from Oklahoma, had come to New York and built a fortune with only his charm and a good head for numbers. He’d fallen in love with Constance Langford, the only daughter of an old aristocratic family on Long Island. The Langfords had little money left beyond the Fairholme estate, which was in hock up to the eyeballs. But Howard Spencer, delirious with happiness at their marriage, had assured Constance she’d never worry about money again.

He’d kept his promise. While his wife had been alive, he’d been careful and smart and lucky with his investment fund. It was only after his wife’s sudden death that he’d become reckless, taking bigger and bigger financial risks, until his once respected hedge fund became a hollowed-out Ponzi scheme, and suddenly eight billion dollars were gone.

The months of Howard’s arrest and trial had been awful for Letty, and worrying about him in prison had been even worse. But now, as she looked at the old man he’d somehow become, was the worst of all.

As she looked at his slumped shoulders, his heartbroken eyes—at his broken arm, still hanging uselessly in the cast—she felt her anger evaporate, leaving in its place only grief and despair. Her mouth snapped shut.

Slumping forward, she covered her face with her hands.

The memory of Darius’s words floated back to her. You needed to pay off some mobster who’d broken your father’s arm and threatened to break his whole body if he didn’t come up with a hundred thousand dollars within the week.

Chilled, she looked up. “Why didn’t you tell me someone broke your arm, Dad? Why did you let me think it was an accident?”

Howard looked down at the floor guiltily. “I didn’t want you to worry.”

“Worry?” she cried.

His wan cheeks turned pink. “A father’s supposed to take care of his daughter, not the other way around.”

“So it’s true? Some thug broke your arm and threatened you if you didn’t pay him back his money?”

“I knew I could handle it.” He tried to smile. “And I have. Once I sign over this check, everything will be fine.”

“How do you know you won’t have more thugs demanding money, once it’s known you actually paid someone back?”

Her father looked shocked. “No. Most of the people who invested in my fund were good, civilized people. Not violent!”

Letty ground her teeth. For a man who’d been in a minimum-security federal prison for nine years, he could be surprisingly naive.

“You should have told me.”

“Why? What would you have done except worry? Or worse—try to talk to the man yourself and put yourself in danger?” He set his jaw. “Like I said, I didn’t know if Darius would actually send the money. But I knew, either way, you would be safe because you’d be with him.” He shook his head, trying to smile. “I really thought you and Darius would take one look at each other and be happy again.”

Letty sagged back against the sofa cushions. Her father’d really thought he was doing her a favor. That he was reuniting her with a lost love. That he was protecting her, saving her.

She whispered bleakly, “Darius thought I was a gold digger.”

Howard looked indignant. “Of course he didn’t! Once you told him you hadn’t sent the message…”

“He didn’t believe me.”

“Then…then…he must have believed you were just a good daughter looking out for your father. Darius has so much money now, you can’t tell me he’ll miss such a small amount. Not after everything you did for him!”

“Stop,” she choked out. Just remembering how Darius had looked at her when he handed her the cashier’s check was enough to make her want to die. But after he’d told her about the threat against her father’s life, what choice had she had?

Her father looked bewildered. “Didn’t you tell him what happened ten years ago? Why you never ran away with him?”

She flinched as she remembered Darius’s acid words. Go on, Letty. Tell me how your betrayal was actually a favor. Explain how you destroyed my family at great personal sacrifice, because you loved me so much.

“No,” she whispered, “and I never will. Darius doesn’t love me. He hates me more than ever.”

Howard’s wrinkled face looked mournful. “Oh, sweetheart.”

“But now I hate him, too.” She looked up. “That’s the one good thing that happened tonight. Now I hate him, too.”

Her father looked anguished. “That was never what I wanted!”

“It’s good.” Wiping her eyes, she tried to smile. “I’ve wasted too many years dreaming of him. Missing him. I’m done.”

She was.

The Darius Kyrillos she’d loved no longer existed. She saw that now. She’d tried to give him everything, and he’d seduced her with a cold heart. Her love for Darius was burned out of her forever. Her only hope was to try to forget.

But four weeks later, she found out how impossible that would be. She’d never be able to forget Darius Kyrillos now.

She was pregnant with his baby.

She’d taken the pregnancy test, sure it would be negative. When it was positive, she was shocked. But shock soon became a happy daze as Letty imagined a sweet fat baby in her arms, to cuddle and adore.

Then she told her father.

“I’m going to be a grandfather?” Howard was enraptured at the news. “That’s wonderful! And when you tell Darius—”

That caused the first chill of fear. Because Letty suddenly recalled this baby wouldn’t just be hers, but Darius’s.

He hated her.

He’d threatened to take her baby from her.

Letty shook her head violently. “I can never tell him about the baby!”

“Of course you will.” Her father patted her on the shoulder. “I know you’re angry at him. He must have hurt you very badly. But that’s all in the past! A man has a right to know he’s going to be a father.”

“Why?” She turned to him numbly. “So he can try to take the baby away because he hates me so much?”

“Take the baby?” Her father laughed. “Once Darius finds out you’re pregnant, he’ll forget his anger and remember how much he loves you. You’ll see. The baby will bring you together.”

She shook her head. “You’re living in a dream world. He told me…”

“What?”

Letty turned away, hearing the echo of that coldly malevolent voice. I would never allow any child of mine to be raised by you and that criminal you call a father.

“We need to start saving money,” she whispered. “Now.”

“Why? Once you’re married, money will never be a worry for you again.” Howard looked ecstatic. “You and my grandchild will always be cared for.”

Letty knew her father couldn’t believe Darius wanted to hurt her. But she knew he did.

I would hire a hundred lawyers first and drive you both into the sea.

They had to leave this city as soon as possible.

Under the terms of her father’s probation, Howard was required to remain in the state of New York. So they’d go north, move to some little town upstate where no one knew them, where she could find a new job.

There was just one problem. Moving required money. First and last month’s rent, a security deposit and transport for Letty, Howard and all their belongings. Money they didn’t have. They were barely keeping their heads above water as it was.

Over the next few months, Letty’s fears were proved true. No matter how hard she worked, she couldn’t save money. Howard was always hungry or needed something urgently. Money disappeared. There were also the added expenses of medical co-payments for Letty’s doctor visits, and physical therapy for her father’s arm.

There was some good fortune. After Howard had paid off the mobster, no other angry former investors had threatened him, demanding repayment.

But there, their luck ended. Just when Letty was desperate for overtime pay, all the other waitstaff suddenly seemed to want it, too. But warmer summer weather meant fewer customers at the diner craving the fried eggs and chicken fried steak that were the diner’s specialties. Her work hours became less, not more.

Each morning when she left for work, her father pretended to look through job listings in the paper, looking shifty-eyed and pale. Pregnancy exhausted her. Each night when she got home from work, almost falling asleep where she stood, she cooked dinner for them both. She’d do the dishes and go to bed. Then the whole day would start again.

Every day, she anxiously counted the savings she kept in her old chipped cookie jar on the kitchen counter. And every day, she looked at the calendar and felt more afraid.

By late August, amid the sticky heat of New York City, Letty was growing frantic. She could no longer hide her baby bump, not even with her father’s oversize shirts. Everyone at the diner knew she was pregnant, including her friend and coworker Belle Langtry, who kept teasing her about it.

“Who’s the father?” Belle demanded. “Is it Prince Charming? I swear I saw you leave here once with a dark-haired man in a sports car.”

No. It wasn’t Prince Charming, Letty thought numbly. Her baby’s father was no prince, but a selfish, coldhearted beast who wanted to steal her child away.

Finally, as her yearlong lease on the apartment ended, she knew she couldn’t wait any longer. She gave two weeks’ notice at the diner. She still hadn’t saved enough money, but time had run out.

On the first of September, Letty splashed cold water on her face in the darkness before dawn, then looked at her drawn face in the mirror.

Today was the day.

They couldn’t rent a truck to move their belongings. No money for that. Instead, they’d just take what would fit in two suitcases on the bus.

They’d have to leave behind all the final memories from Fairholme. From her childhood. From her mother.

The thought made her throat ache.

But Letty was six months pregnant now. Her heart pounded as she put her hand protectively over her baby bump. She knew from the ultrasound at the doctor’s office that she was expecting a boy. How had time fled so quickly? In less than three months, by late November, she’d be cuddling her sweet baby in her arms.

Or else she’d be weeping as the baby’s coldhearted father took him away from her forever. She still remembered Darius’s cold, dark eyes, heard the flat echo of his voice.

If by some unfortunate chance you become pregnant, selling me our baby would be your only option.

She was suddenly terrified she’d waited too long to leave New York.

Going into the tiny kitchen, she tried to keep her voice cheerful as she said, “Dad, I’m going to pick up my last paycheck, then buy bus tickets.”

“I still don’t understand why Rochester,” he said with a scowl.

She sighed. “I told you. My friend Belle knows someone who knows someone who might be able to get me a job there. Everyone says it’s nice. I need you to start packing.”

“I have other plans today.” His voice was peevish.

“Dad, our lease is up in two days. I know it’s not fun, but whatever you don’t pack, I’m going to have to call the junk dealer to take.” Her throat ached. Maybe all their leftover stuff was junk, but it was all they had left. Of Fairholme. Of her mother. Her voice tightened. “Look, I know it won’t be easy.”

Sitting at the peeling Formica table where he was doing the crossword, Howard glared at her with irritation. “You just need to tell that man of yours you’re pregnant.”

They’d been having this argument for months. She gritted her teeth. “I can’t. I told you.”

“Poppycock. A man should be given the opportunity to take care of his own child. And you know, Letty,” he added gruffly, “I won’t always be here to look after you.”

Howard—look after her? When was the last time that had been true, instead of the other way around? She looked at her father, then sighed. “Why don’t you believe me?”

“I knew Darius as a boy.” Fiddling with his untouched coffee mug, he looked at her seriously. “If you’d just help him see past his anger, he’s got a good heart—”

“I’m not gambling on his good heart,” she said bitterly. “Not after the way he treated me.”

Her father looked thoughtful. “I could just call him…”

“No!” Letty shouted. Her eyes blazed. “If you ever go behind my back like that again, I will never talk to you for the rest of my life. Do you understand? Never.”

“Okay, okay,” he grumbled. “But he’s your baby’s father. You should just marry him and be happy.”

That left her speechless for a minute.

“Just be packed by the time I return,” she said finally, and she went out into the gray, rainy September morning. She picked up her last check at the diner—for a pitiful amount, but every dollar would help—and said farewell to her fellow waitress Belle, who’d moved to New York from Texas the previous Christmas.

“Anytime you need anything, you call me, you hear?” Belle hugged her fiercely. “No matter where you are, Rochester or Rome, remember I’m only a phone call away!”

Letty didn’t make friends easily, so it was hard to say goodbye to the only real friend she’d made since she’d left Fairholme. The thought of going to yet another new apartment in a new town where she didn’t know anyone, in hopes of starting a job that might not even exist, filled her with dread. She tried to smile.

“You too, Belle,” she managed. Then, wiping her eyes, she said goodbye to everyone else at the diner and went back out into the rain to deposit her check at the bank and get two one-way bus tickets to Rochester.

When Letty got back home, her hair and clothes were damp with rain. Her father wasn’t at the apartment, and his suitcases were empty. All their belongings were still untouched, exactly where she’d left them.

She’d just sort through everything herself, she thought wearily. Once she’d figured out how many boxes they’d have to leave behind, she’d call the junk dealer.

Of the eight billion dollars her father’s investment fund had lost, three billion had since been recovered. But the authorities had been careful not to leave him with anything of value. Their possessions had been picked over long ago by the Feds and bankruptcy court.

What was left was all crammed into this tiny apartment. The broken flute her mother had played at Juilliard. The ceramic animals Constance had painted for her daughter as gifts, starting with her first birthday. The leather-bound classic books from her grandfather’s collection, water-damaged, so worthless. Except to them. Her great-grandfather’s old ship in a bottle. Her grandma Spencer’s homemade Christmas ornaments. All would have to be left.

We’ll get through it, Letty told herself fiercely. They could still be happy. She’d raise her baby with love, in a snug cottage overlooking a garden of flowers. Her son would have a happy childhood, just as Letty had.

He wouldn’t be raised in some stark gray penthouse without a mother, without love…

Letty started digging through the first pile of clutter. She planned to stay up the whole night scrubbing down the apartment, in hopes their landlord might actually give back her security deposit.

Hearing a hard knock at the door, she rose to her feet, overwhelmed with relief. Her father had come back to help. He must have forgotten his key again. Sorting through their possessions would be so much easier with two of them—

Opening the door, she gasped.

Darius stood in her doorway, dressed in a black button-down shirt with well-cut jeans that showed the rugged lines of his powerful body. It was barely noon, but his jaw was dark with five-o’clock shadow.

For a moment, even hating and fearing him as she did, Letty was dazzled by that ruthless masculine beauty.

“Letty,” he greeted her coldly. Then his eyes dropped to her baby bump.

With an intake of breath, Letty tried to shut the door in his face.

He blocked her with his powerful shoulder and pushed his way into her apartment.

CHAPTER FOUR

SIX MONTHS AGO Darius had wanted vengeance.

He’d gotten it. He’d ruthlessly taken Letitia Spencer’s virginity, then tossed her out into a cold winter’s night. He’d seduced her, insulted her. He’d thrown the money in her face, made her feel cheap.

It had been delicious.

But since then, to his dismay, he’d discovered the price of that vengeance.

In Darius’s childhood, back on the Greek island where he was born, his grandmother had often told him that vengeance hurt the person who committed it worse than the one who endured it. When the kids at school mocked his illegitimate birth, sneering at his mother’s abandonment—Even your own mitéra didn’t want you—his grandmother had told him to ignore them, to take the high road.

He’d tried, but the boys’ taunts had only grown worse until he was finally forced to punch them. They’d all been bloodied in the fight, but especially Darius, since it had been one against four.

“So you see I’m right,” his grandmother had said gravely, bandaging him afterward. “You were hurt worse.”

In Darius’s own opinion, that vengeance had been not only justified, but strategic. The boys at school had never taunted him again.

But this time, his grandmother had been proved right. Because Darius’s vengeance against Letty had hurt him more than he’d ever imagined.

Instead of quenching the flame, that night together had only built his desire for her into a blazing fire.

He wanted her. Every night for the last six months, he’d half expected Letty to contact him. Once her prideful anger had faded, surely she would want him back—if not for his body, then obviously for his money.

But she never had. And when he’d remembered the haunted look on her beautiful heart-shaped face the night she’d told him she loved him, the night he’d taken her virginity and tossed her ruthlessly into the dark, he’d had moments when he’d wondered if he might have been wrong.

But how could he be wrong? The evidence spoke for itself.

Still, in the months since their night together, his continual raw desire for her had made him edgy. He’d intended to remain as his company’s CEO for a year, guiding his team in the transition after the sale. Instead, he’d gotten into an argument with the head of the conglomerate and left within weeks. Darius could no longer endure working for someone else, but he’d signed a noncompete clause, so couldn’t start a new business in the same field.

Bereft of the twenty-hour workdays that had been the entirety of his life for a decade, he hadn’t known how to fill his hours. He tried spending some of his fortune. He’d bought a race car, then ten cars, then a race track. He’d bought four planes, all with interiors done in different colors. No. Next he’d tried extreme sports: skydiving, heli-skiing. Yawn.

Worst of all, he’d been surrounded by beautiful women, all keen to get his attention. And he hadn’t wanted a single one of them.

He’d been bored. Worse. He’d felt frustrated and angry. Because even with the endless freedom of time and money, he couldn’t have what he really wanted.

Letty.

Now, seeing her in the flesh, so beautiful—so pregnant—he hated himself for ever taking his vengeance. No matter how richly she’d deserved it, look where that thrill of hatred and lust had led.

Pregnant. With his baby.

Even wearing an oversize white T-shirt and baggy jeans, Letty was somehow more sensual, more delectable, than any stick-thin model in a skintight cocktail dress. Letty’s pregnancy curves were lush. Her skin glowed. Her breasts had grown enormous. With effort, he forced his gaze down to her belly.

“So it’s true,” he said in a low voice. “You’re pregnant.”

She looked frozen. Then she squared her shoulders, tossing her dark ponytail in a futile gesture of bravado. “So?”

“Is the baby mine?”

“Yours?” Her eyes shot sparks of fire, even though she had dark shadows beneath, as if she hadn’t been sleeping well. “What makes you think the baby’s yours? Maybe I slept with ten men since our night. Maybe I slept with a hundred—”

The thought of her sleeping with other men made Darius sick. “You’re lying.”

“How do you know?”

“Because your father told me.”

The fight went out of her. She went pale. “My…my father?”

“He wanted me to pay for the information, but when I refused, he told me everything. For free.”

“Maybe he was lying,” she said weakly. She looked as if she might faint.

“Sit down,” Darius ordered. “I’ll get you a glass of water. Then we’ll talk.”

She sank into the old pullout sofa, her cheeks pale. It wasn’t hard for him to find the kitchen. The apartment was pathetically small—just a postage-stamp-sized living room, surrounded by an even smaller bedroom, bathroom and kitchen.

He looked around him, amazed that the onetime heiress of Fairholme, born into a forty-room mansion, was now living with her father in an apartment the same size as the room her mother had once used to arrange flowers off the solarium.

Old boxes and mementos were packed everywhere. The leftovers of her family’s former life—items that obviously weren’t valuable enough to be sold, but too precious to be thrown away—were clustered around the old television and piled tightly along the walls. A pillow and folded blanket sat beside the pullout sofa.

Darius walked across the worn carpet to the peeling linoleum of the telephone-booth-sized kitchen. Dust motes floated in the weak gray sunlight. The barred window overlooked an air shaft that faced other apartments, just a few feet away. With the bars across the window, it felt like prison.

It’s better than they deserve, he told himself firmly. And it was still nicer than his childhood home in Heraklios. At least this place had electricity, running water. At least this place had a parent.

Darius’s own parents had both left him, in different ways, two days after he was born. His unemployed father had discovered his newborn son crying in a basket by his door, left out in the rain by his former lover, a wealthy, spoiled heiress who’d abandoned the child she’d never wanted.

Fired from his job, Eugenios Kyrillos found himself unable to get another. No other rich Greek fathers, it seemed, wanted to risk their daughters’ virtue to a chauffeur who didn’t know his place. Desperate to find work, he’d departed for America, leaving his baby son to be raised by his grandmother in the desolate house by the sea.

The first time Darius had spoken to his father in person had been at his grandmother’s funeral, when he was eleven. Then his father had taken him from Greece, away from everything and everyone he’d ever known, and brought him to America.

Fairholme had seemed like an exotic palace, where everyone spoke a language he couldn’t understand. His father had seemed just as strange, the emotionally distant chauffeur of this grand American king—Howard Spencer.

And look what the Spencers had come to now.

Darius had long ago torn down his grandmother’s shack in Heraklios and built a palatial villa. He had a penthouse in Manhattan, a ski chalet in Switzerland, his private race track outside London. His personal fortune was greater than anything Howard Spencer ever dreamed of.

And the Spencers were now living in this tiny, threadbare apartment.

But instead of feeling a sense of triumph, Darius felt strangely unsettled as he walked through her dreary kitchen and poured a glass of water from the tap. Returning to the equally depressing living room, he handed Letty the glass, then looked at the folded blankets and pillow on the floor.

“Who sleeps on the sofa?”

Letty’s cheeks turned pink as she looked down at the sagging cushions. “I do.”

“You pay all the rent, and your father gets the bedroom?”

“He hasn’t been sleeping well. I just want him to be comfortable.”

Darius looked at her incredulously. “And you’re pregnant.”

“What do you care?” she said bitterly. “You’re just here to take my baby away.”

Well. True. His eyes fell on the empty suitcases. “Where were you planning to go?”

“Anywhere you couldn’t find us.”

Darius stared down at her grimly. After his conversation with Howard Spencer, he’d had his investigator check up on Letty and found she’d only recently left her job as a waitress. She was still broke. None of the other employees remembered seeing any men around her, except one waitress, Belle, who had described Darius himself.

It seemed that, contrary to all previous assumptions, Letty wasn’t a gold digger. Not with other men.

Not even with Darius.

In that, he’d misjudged her. After the way Letty had crushed him so devastatingly ten years ago, informing him that she was leaving him for a richer man, he’d believed Letty was a fortune hunter to the core.

It made sense. His own mother had abandoned him as a two-day-old newborn for the exact same reason. To Calla, Darius had been the embarrassing result of a one-night liaison with her wealthy family’s chauffeur. She’d been determined to marry as befitted her station. She’d cared only about money and the social position that went with it.

But Letty wasn’t the same. At least not anymore.

Darius abruptly sat down on the sofa beside her. “Why didn’t you come to me when you found out you were pregnant? You had to know I would give you everything you needed and more.”

“Give? I knew you’d only take!” she said incredulously. “You threatened me!”

He ground his teeth. “We could have come to some arrangement.”

“You threatened to buy my baby, and if I tried to refuse, you would take the baby from me and—what were your words?—drive me into the sea?”

Darius didn’t like to be reminded of what he’d said six months ago. He’d rationalized his cruelty on the grounds of justice. But now…strictly speaking, he might have sounded a little less than civil, if not outright crazy. Irritated, he glared at her. “Drink your water.”

“Why? What did you put into it?” She sniffed the glass. “Some drug to make me pass out so you can kidnap me to a Park Avenue dungeon?”

He snorted a laugh in spite of himself. “The water came from your tap. Drink it or not. I just thought you looked pale.”

She stared at him for a moment, then took a tentative sip.

He looked around the tiny apartment. “Why are you living here?”

“Sadly, the presidential suite at the St. Regis was already booked.”

“I mean it, Letty. Why did you stay in New York all these years? You could have just left. Moved west where no one would know you or care about what your father did.”

She blinked fast. “I couldn’t abandon him. I love him.”

The man was a liar and a cheat, so of course Letty loved him. And she’d intended to raise their baby with him in the house, the man Darius blamed for his own father’s death. He ground his teeth. “Are you even taking care of yourself? Do you have a doctor?”

“Of course,” she said, stung. “How can you ask me that?”

“Because you’ve been working on your feet all day, until recently. And living in a place like this.” He gestured angrily around the threadbare, cluttered apartment. “It never occurred to you I’d want better for our child?”

She glared at him. “I wanted better! I wanted my baby’s father to be a good man I could trust and love. Instead, I got you, Darius, the worst man on earth!”

“You didn’t think so ten years ago.”

He immediately wished he could take the words back, because they insinuated that he still cared. Which he didn’t.

“Oh, you’re actually willing to talk about ten years ago? Fine. Let’s talk about it.” She briefly closed her eyes. “The reason I never showed up the night we were supposed to elope was because I was protecting you.”

His lip curled scornfully. “Protecting me.”

“Yes.” Her expression was cool. “The day we were going to elope, my father told me his investment fund was a fraud. It had stopped making money years before, but he’d continued making payouts to old investors by taking money from new ones. The Feds were already on his tail. I knew what was going to happen.” She lifted her luminous gaze. “I couldn’t let you get dragged into it. Not with all your big dreams. You’d just started your tech company…” She took a deep breath and whispered, “I couldn’t let my father’s crime ruin your life, too.”

For a moment, Darius’s heart twisted as he looked at her beautiful face, her heartbreaking hazel eyes. Then he remembered that he no longer had any heart vulnerable enough to break.

“You’re lying. You left me for another man. A rich man who could—how did you express it?—give you the life of luxury you deserved.” He snorted. “Though obviously he wasn’t much good. He must have dumped you the moment your father was arrested.”

“He couldn’t dump me.” She gave a low laugh. “He never existed.”

“What?”

“It was the only way I knew you’d let me go.” She lifted her chin and added with deliberate lightness, “I knew your weakness, even then.”

“Weakness?” he growled.

“You always said a man could be measured by his money. I knew you wouldn’t accept my just breaking up with you without explanation. So I gave you one. I told you I wanted someone richer. I knew you’d believe that.”

He stared at her. “It’s not true.”

“I’ve always been a terrible liar.” She looked sad. “But you still believed it. And immediately stopped calling me.”

Darius’s cheeks burned as he remembered how he’d felt that day. She was right.

He had loved her beyond reason, had been determined to fight for her at any cost. Until she’d told him she didn’t want him because he was poor. He’d believed it instantly. Because money made the man. No money, no man.

His throat felt tight as he looked at her, struggling not to believe she was telling the truth when every fiber of him believed her.

“And my father?” he said hoarsely. “Were you protecting him, too—getting him fired?”

“It’s true. I did have him fired. I told Dad I couldn’t bear to look at Eugenios because he reminded me of you. I did it because I was afraid my dad might ask him to invest his life savings in the bankrupt investment fund. My dad still believed he could fix everything then. I knew your father would give him his savings. He was loyal to the core.”

“Yes, he was,” he bit out. His father had always made his employer his top priority, even over his own son.

Darius couldn’t remember when his father had ever put his son first, over his job. He hadn’t attended Darius’s school events, not even his high school graduation. Being eternally at Howard Spencer’s beck and call, keeping the ten luxury cars all gleaming and ready, had been Eugenios’s total focus in life.

Oh, his father had fed and clothed him and given him a place to live in the two-bedroom apartment over the Fairholme garage that went with his job. But emotionally, they were oceans apart. The two men never talked.

Until that one awful day Darius told his father what he really thought of him…

But that memory was so white-hot with pain, he pushed it from his mind with all the force of a ball thrown from the earth to the moon.

Letty sighed beside him on the sofa. “I was trying to get your father away from Fairholme before he lost everything. But it was too late. He’d already invested his life savings years before. My dad had accepted it for his fund, even though it was such a small amount,” she said in a small voice. “As a favor.”

A small amount? His father’s life savings! The arrogance of them! Darius’s dark eyebrows lowered in fury.

“Howard Spencer is a liar and cheat,” he said harshly. “He destroyed people’s lives.”

“I know,” she whispered, looking down. She bit her full, rosy lower lip. “He never meant to.”

“He deserves to suffer.”

She looked up. “He has suffered. During his arrest and trial, I tried so hard to be strong for him. When he was in prison, I was there every visiting day. I cheered him up. Encouraged him. And all the time, I felt so scared. So alone.” She gave him a watery smile. “Sometimes the only thing I had to cling to was you.”

“Me?”

“At least I hadn’t dragged you down with me,” she whispered. “At least you were able to follow your dreams.”

Darius stared at her in shock.

Then he narrowed his eyes. She was trying to take credit for his accomplishments. To claim that if not for her sacrifice, he never would have made his fortune. She thought so little of him. Ice chilled his heart.

“And you expect me to be grateful?”

She looked startled. “I—”

“When you found out about your father’s crime,” he said tightly, “you should have come to me. I was your future husband. Instead, you lied to me. You cut me out of your life. Rather than asking for my help, you apparently believed I was so incompetent and useless, you felt you had to sacrifice yourself to save me.”

“No,” she gasped, “you’ve got it all wrong…”

“You never respected me.” He forced his voice to remain calm when his shoulders were tight with repressed fury. “Not my intelligence, my judgment or my strength.”

“Respected you?” she choked out. “I loved you. But I knew what was about to happen. I couldn’t let you drown with us. You had nothing—”

“You’re right,” he said coldly. “I had nothing. No money. No influence. You knew I couldn’t pay for lawyers or speak to politicians on your behalf. So you decided I was useless.”

“No.” She looked pale. “I just meant you had nothing to do with it—”

“You were my fiancée. I had everything to do with it. I would have tried to protect you, to comfort you. But you never gave me the chance. Because you believed I would fail.”

Her voice sounded strangled. “Darius—”

He held up his hand sharply. “But now I have made my fortune. Everything has changed. And yet you still intended to disappear and keep my child secret from me for the rest of your life.” A new, chilling thought occurred to him. “What story did you intend to tell the baby, Letty?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“What were you going to raise my child to believe? That he or she had no father? That I hadn’t wanted him?” An old childhood grief he’d thought long buried suddenly shook the ground beneath his feet, like an earthquake threatening to swallow him whole. “That I’d purposefully abandoned him?”

“I don’t know!” Letty cried. “But you said you’d take the baby from me. I had no choice but to run!”

Darius stared at the woman he’d known for most of his life. He’d loved her for such a short, sweet time. He’d hated her far longer.

He himself had been abandoned by everyone who should have loved him as a child. His whole young life he’d never felt like he really belonged anywhere.

And then there was Letty.

He’d loved her so wildly, so truly, so recklessly. She had finally destroyed what was left of his heart. That had been Darius’s final lesson.

He was determined that his child would never learn such a lesson.

Darius’s jaw tightened. His child would be surrounded by love from the beginning. His son or daughter would have a solid place in the world and never doubt their worth.

The blindfold of rage and hurt pride lifted from his eyes. He looked at Letty, and suddenly everything became crystal clear. Calm settled over him like rain.

Their child needed both of them.

For the last decade, he’d tried to forget about the Letty he’d once known. About her character. About her kind heart.

He saw now that in Letty’s mind, her hurtful lies a decade before hadn’t shown disrespect, but love. She really had been trying to protect him. As she still was trying to protect her father.

As she was trying now, in her own misguided way, to protect their child.

Letty hadn’t betrayed him. She’d loved him, as recently as February, the night they’d conceived their child. Yes, she’d shown bad judgment ten years ago, lying to him, hiding the truth about her father. She’d continued to show bad judgment today, planning to run away with his child. A chill went down his spine to think of what might have happened if her father hadn’t called him today.

But it wasn’t entirely her fault. Her love blinded her. It made her weak. And after the cold way he’d treated her, and his threats to take the child, he couldn’t blame her for being afraid.

It didn’t make her a monster. It wasn’t enough of a reason to brutally separate her from their child. Not after he himself had known what it was to have no mother. No father. No real place in the world.

Their baby would have both parents and a secure, settled home.

Darius knew he had to rebuild Letty’s trust in him. He had to find a way to strengthen her occasionally faulty judgment with his own. If Darius was wiser, it was because he never allowed love to blind him. He always focused on the bottom line. So what was it here?

The answer was simple.

He had to make Letty his wife.

It was the only way to properly secure their child’s future. It would guarantee the stability of two parents and a permanent home.

And also, his body suddenly whispered, marrying Letty would permanently secure her in his bed.

The thought electrified him. That settled it.

“I misjudged you,” he said.

Letty glared at him. “Yes!”

“I treated you badly.”

“You think?”

“So let me make up for it now.” Leaning toward her on the sofa, Darius said, “I want you to marry me, Letty.”

Her jaw dropped. “Marry you!”

“I’ve realized now I blamed everything on you. It wasn’t your fault…”

“No.”

“It was your father’s,” he finished grimly. “He’s ruined your life. I won’t let him ruin our child’s.”

Her eyes were wide as she put her hands over her large belly. “You’re crazy. My father loves the baby, just as he loves me!”

“And what about the next time some thug decides to attack him? What if that man decides to hurt your father’s family instead?”

Letty’s expression became troubled. Swallowing, she whispered, “That wouldn’t happen…”

“No. It won’t. Because you and the baby will be miles away from Howard Spencer and safe with me.” He rose abruptly to his feet. “You will have to sign a prenuptial agreement…”

“I won’t, because I’m not going to marry you.”

She wasn’t joking or playing coy. She actually sounded serious.

Darius stared down at her in confusion. So many women were dying to marry him, he’d assumed that Letty—jobless, penniless, faced with threats on all sides—would be thrilled at the thought of being his bride. “Of course you want to marry me.”

“Marry someone I hate? Who hates me back? No, thanks.”

He couldn’t believe she was trying to fight him when it was the only practical solution. He gritted his teeth. It was that idea of love, once again interfering with all common sense!

“Have you thought this through?” Folding his arms, he regarded her coolly. “I could take you to court. Have you declared an unfit mother, selfishly placing our child at risk.”

Letty rose to her feet in turn, matching him toe-to-toe, though he was bigger by a foot in height and at least sixty pounds of muscle. She narrowed her eyes. “You could try.”

In spite of himself, he almost smiled. Another thing he’d forgotten about her character. She fought harder for others than she ever did for herself.

“You really think you can handle a custody battle? You think there are waves of lawyers out there, willing to support Howard Spencer’s daughter pro bono, when all they’d get for their trouble is a lot of bad PR?”

Her cheeks flushed, even as she lifted her chin defiantly. “We’ll see, won’t we?”

But beneath her bravado, her expression was soft and sad. Her long dark ponytail gleamed in waves down her back, and his eyes strayed to the roundness of her belly and full breasts, voluptuous beyond belief. In this moment, Darius thought she looked like everything desirable in a woman—the perfect image of what any man would dream of in a wife.

He suddenly imagined how she might look in court. Whatever her father’s sins, if she did find a good attorney, she could be packaged and sold to the presiding judge as the poor, innocent, poverty-stricken waitress threatened by the cold, power-hungry billionaire. No matter how many legal sharks he hired, Darius wasn’t guaranteed to win. There was some small possibility he might lose.

He abruptly changed tack.

“Does our baby deserve to have parents at war? Living in here—” he motioned to the peeling wallpaper, the cracked ceiling “—instead of my penthouse? Does he deserve to grow up in poverty without the protection of his father’s name? Without my love?”

Letty looked stricken. “Our baby could still have your love.”

“He deserves everything I can provide. Are you really so selfish as to make our child suffer for the sake of your own angry pride?”

He saw emotions struggle on her face. She really was a terrible liar. He knew he was very close to getting what he wanted—her total surrender.

“We could make our marriage work,” he murmured. “Our son or daughter would be our priority, always.”

“Son,” she said unwillingly.

He looked at her sharply.

She took a deep breath, then slowly smiled. “We’re having a boy.”

“A boy!” The nebulous idea of a baby suddenly solidified in Darius’s mind. He could imagine his son smiling, playing soccer, laughing, hugging him. And the fact that she’d revealed that detail proved how close she was to agreeing to his proposal. His resolve solidified. Stepping closer, he said softly, “Marry me, Letty.”

Looking uncertain, she bit her lip. “It would be a disaster. Not just for me. For you. Don’t you know how much people hate me?”

“Not once you’re with me,” he said confidently.

“You don’t understand how bad it is…”

“I’m sure you’re exaggerating.” He’d all but won. Now that his unborn child was secure, he was already jumping ahead to the thought of enjoying Letty’s surrender in full, imagining her naked and writhing with desire in his arms. He wanted to take her back to the penthouse immediately. Then he remembered. “I am hosting a charity event tonight. The Fall Ball.”

She looked impressed in spite of herself. “You’re hosting that this year?”

“We can announce our engagement to all of New York.”

“It’s a mistake!”

“Let me worry about that.”

“Okay, but…”

“But what?”

A shadow crossed her face. “But I don’t love you anymore.”

He felt a strange emotion, deep down inside. He crushed it down before he could identify what it was.

“I do not need your love. I can assure you that you’ll never have mine. Love is for children. I just need your compliance.” When she still hesitated, he took a deliberate step back. “Or I can walk out that door and go straight to my lawyer.”

Letty looked wistful in the gray light from the small window. She sighed sadly. “Have it your way.”

“You’ll marry me?”

She nodded.

He felt a surge of smug masculine triumph. “Good choice.”

Pulling her roughly into his arms, he did what he’d yearned to do for six months and kissed her.

From the moment he felt her lips against his and tasted her sweetness—her mouth, her tongue—he was lost, and at the same time, found. Her lips parted, and as she melted against him, he savored her surrender. His body and long-dead soul roared back to life.

Letty wrenched away. “But first, you’ll take me to your charity ball tonight. And see firsthand what it would be like to actually have me as your wife.”

“Good—”

“Just remember.” She gave him a crooked smile. “You asked for it.”

CHAPTER FIVE

LETTY ALMOST DIDN’T leave a note for her father. Her anger at his betrayal was too high. But in the end she didn’t want him to worry, so she scribbled a note and left it on the counter.

Out with Darius, and I’m never talking to you again.

Darius had taken one look at her closet and told her he was taking her shopping for the ball. She’d tried to protest, but he’d retorted, “There’s no point in announcing our engagement if you turn up at the ball dressed in rags. No one would believe it.”

“Fine,” she said sulkily. “Waste your money on a ball gown. See if I care.”

But she had the sudden disconcerting feeling that her life was no longer her own.

As she climbed into his sports car, her stomach growled with hunger. But she vowed she wasn’t going to say a word about it. It was bad enough he was buying her a dress. She wasn’t going to ask him for food, like a beggar!

But as Darius climbed into the driver’s seat beside her, all her senses went on high alert. Having him so close did strange things to her insides. As he drove through the busy traffic, she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. His dark hair wasn’t even mussed, and his powerful body was relaxed in the leather seat. He looked so much calmer than she felt.

But why wouldn’t he be relaxed?

He’d won.

She’d lost.

Simple as that.

Or so Darius thought. Letty clasped her hands together in her lap as she looked out the window. Once he actually saw what life would be like for him with her at his side, he wouldn’t be able to get rid of her fast enough. Maybe she and her father could still be on that bus to Rochester tomorrow.

Darius didn’t yet see that her family’s scandal wasn’t something he could master or control. That was why he’d been so angry that she’d protected him ten years ago with her silence. He still somehow thought, if he’d known the truth back then, he could have prevented disaster.

She looked up through the window, seeing flashes of blue sky between the skyscrapers like a strobe light. Darius would get a dose of reality today. He’d discover how toxic the Spencer name was, even now. It had been even worse at the time of her father’s arrest and trial, when reporters and angry, tomato-throwing hecklers had camped outside her father’s pied-à-terre on Central Park West!

Let Darius get just a glimpse of what he would have been up against if she’d actually followed her heart and married him ten years ago instead of setting him free. He didn’t appreciate the way she’d tried to protect him? Fine. Still staring out the window, she wiped her eyes hard. Let him just see.

The rain had stopped. The sky was blue and bright on the first of September. As they drove through Manhattan, puddle-dotted sidewalks were full of gawking tourists, standing still like islands as a current of New Yorkers rushed past them, coming up from the subway, hurrying back to work after lunch.

When their car stopped at a red light, Letty glanced at a fancy chauffeured town car stopped beside them. In the backseat, she saw a man speaking angrily into his phone and staring at a computer tablet, totally wrapped in his own bubble. Rich people lived in a separate world. Letty hadn’t fully realized that.

Not until she’d fallen out of it.

After her father’s confession that awful night long ago, after she’d tried her best to protect Darius and his father by getting them away from the manor, she’d begged Howard to go to the police and throw himself on their mercy.

He’d loved her, so a few months later he’d done it.

The police and Feds had descended on him like the hard-case criminal they believed him to be. Within six months, he was in prison on a nine-year sentence.

Letty had tried to remain in one of the exclusive small towns on Long Island near Fairholme. But it proved impossible. Too many people recognized her and didn’t hesitate to yell or even—more than once—physically take the few dollars in her wallet, saying her father owed them. Manhattan had been even worse, and anyway was way out of her price range. So she’d moved to a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn where she could be anonymous. No one bothered her. Mostly, people were kind.

But without money or family or friends, Letty had learned the hard way what it meant to struggle and always have too much month at the end of her paycheck.

No one likes self-pity. Help someone else, baby. Letty could almost hear the whisper of her mother’s voice, so kind, so warm, so loving. Almost see her mother’s eyes glowing with love. The best way to feel better when you’re sad is to help someone who’s hurting more.

Good advice.

Taking a deep breath, Letty turned to Darius in the sports car. “So tell me about your charity, the one benefiting from the Fall Ball tonight.”

Driving, he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “It provides college scholarships for foster kids.”

“Nice,” she said, surprised. “But I never pegged you as the society-ball-hosting type.”

He shrugged. “I have the time. Might as well use it.”

“You could just waste your days dating beautiful women and spending your obscene amounts of money.”

He pulled his car to a curb where a valet waited. “That’s exactly what I plan to do today.”

“You’re going on a date?” Then she saw his look and realized he meant her. She blushed. “Oh.”

The door opened, and Letty stepped out onto Fifth Avenue, which was lined with exclusive designer shops from famous international brands to quirky boutiques less well-known but every bit as expensive. The last time she’d shopped on this street she’d been a pampered seventeen-year-old looking for a white dress for the graduation ceremony at her private school, Miss Parker’s. She hadn’t fit into society, even then. She’d been too bookish, too tenderhearted, too socially awkward.

But now Letty was actually scared. She glanced at the people coming out of an exclusive department store, almost expecting one of them to tell her to get lost, that she no longer belonged here.

“Which shop first?” Darius asked, his dark eyes smiling.

“I changed my mind,” she muttered. “I don’t want to go.”

The smile disappeared. “Too late for that.”

“Darius…”

Ignoring her protests, he grabbed her hand. Letty tried not to notice the sizzle of electricity from their touching palms as he pulled her into a famous luxury store.

As soon as they passed the doorman into the store’s foyer, a salesgirl came up to them, offering a tray of champagne. “Monsieur?”

He took a glass. “Thank you.”

Noting Letty’s pregnant belly, the salesgirl didn’t offer champagne. “And for madame? Some sparkling water, perhaps, some juice of pamplemousse?”

“No, thanks,” Letty said, pulling away from Darius. Ducking her head, she pretended to look through the nearest dress racks, sparsely and expensively filled with garments that seemed to be designed for a size zero.

“We require assistance,” he said.

“Sir?”

He turned to an elegant white-haired woman, apparently the manager, dressed in an expensive-looking tweed suit. “I need a ball gown for my fiancée.”

Fiancée. The word made Letty shiver. But it was true, in a way. She’d agreed to his marriage proposal.

It’s not a real engagement, she told herself firmly. She glanced down at her bare left hand. There was no ring. No ring meant it wasn’t real. Anyway, the engagement would be over before the end of the night.

“Couture or ready-to-wear, Mr. Kyrillos?” The white-haired woman somehow already knew who he was.

“It’s for tonight.”

“We can, of course, do any last-minute alterations that madame may require. If you’ll please come this way?”

They were led to a private area with a white leather sofa and a three-way mirror, as a succession of salesgirls, under the sharp-eyed direction of the manager, brought in clothes.

“She’ll try on everything,” Darius said, standing in front of the sofa as his cell phone rang. Lifting it from his pocket, he told Letty, “Come out when you have something to show me.”

As salesgirls filled her arms with gowns and gently pushed her toward the changing room, she hesitated. “What do you want to see?”

Looking her body over slowly, Darius gave her a heavy-lidded sensual smile. “Everything.”

Beneath his hot gaze, somehow, he made her feel like a goddess of sex—even at six months pregnant, in her old T-shirt and jeans!

Darius sat down calmly on the white leather sofa, talking into his phone and sipping champagne. She turned away with a sigh to try on gowns for a ball that she was dreading.

Maybe it wouldn’t be all bad, she tried to tell herself. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had new clothes. Everything in her closet was either from high school or purchased from the bargain bin at the thrift store. It might be fun to get a dress that was not only pretty, but actually fit.

Then she saw the price tag of the first gown.

Darius looked up expectantly when she came out of the dressing room. His expression changed to a scowl. “Why are you still in your old clothes?”

“The price of these gowns is ridiculous! We can go to the local thrift shop and find a barely used prom dress…”

“Letty.”

“I mean it. It’s foolish for you to throw money away when you might never see me again after tonight.”

“Now you’re talking nonsense.” He tilted his head, looking her over critically. “Are you not feeling well? Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired?”

She wasn’t going to say a word about being hungry. Wild horses couldn’t drag it out of her!

Her stomach growled again.

“Um. I might have missed breakfast.”

It wasn’t her fault! The baby made her say it!

He looked mad. “You should have told me.” He grabbed a glass of sparkling mineral water from a salesgirl. “Here,” he said gravely, pushing it into her hand. “Start with that. Breakfast or lunch?”

The cool water tasted delicious, and did make her feel slightly better. “Breakfast?”

Turning to one of the hovering assistants, he ordered, “Have a large breakfast sent down from your café.”

“Oh, sir.” The salesgirl looked sorrowful. “I’m afraid that’s impossible…”

“Of course it’s possible for Mr. Kyrillos,” the white-haired manager snapped, turning to them with a bright smile. “A pregnant woman must never go hungry. What would madame like?”

“Everything,” Darius said. “Send down a tray or two. We’ll be here a while. We need a ball gown, but also a great deal more. Shoes, accessories, maternity clothes. Price is no object. We may be here for hours.”

“Yes, sir,” the woman replied happily, clapping her hands at her assistants, who rushed to obey.

“Darius, you don’t need to make a fuss!”

“You’re wrong. I can see all too well that I need to be in charge. Because you’ve always been better at taking care of others than yourself.” He drew Letty gently to the white sofa. “Here. Sit down. Take a breath.”

“But I left all those dresses in the changing room—”

“They will wait. Relax. You do not have to shop hungry. Breakfast is on its way.”

The white leather cushion shifted beneath them, tipping her toward him on the sofa. The edge of her thigh brushed against his. She jumped away with an intake of breath, looking up at him with big eyes.

“I’m not your responsibility.”

“You are now.” Reaching out, he tucked a long tendril of her dark hair back behind her ear and said softly, “And taking care of you will be my pleasure.”

His…pleasure?

A sudden terrifying thought occurred to her.

“Darius,” she said haltingly, unable to meet his eyes. “You surely can’t think…”

“Think what?”

Taking her courage in her hands, she looked into his dark wicked eyes. However charming he might seem at the moment, she couldn’t forget the heartless man he’d revealed himself to be. She couldn’t let herself confuse him with the boy she’d once loved. No matter how much Darius’s dark eyes, his smile, his kindness might seem the same. He was nothing like the man she’d loved.

“You can’t think…” She took a deep breath. “That our marriage would be real.”

“Of course it will be real. Legal in any court.”

“I mean…” She licked her lips, hating him for making her spell it out. “It would just be a marriage of convenience, nothing more. For our baby. We wouldn’t… You and I, we would never…”

“You will sleep in my bed, Letty.” His dark eyes burned through her. “Naked. Every single night.”

His sensual voice swirled around her body like a hot wind, making her toes curl.

She had to resist. She had no intention of sleeping with him again, no matter how seductive he might be. She’d been a virgin till twenty-eight, waiting for love. That love was gone.

“I loved you the night we conceived our baby. Everything has changed. Unlike you, I can’t have sex with a cold heart,” she said in a low voice. “No love, no sex.”

He wrapped her hand in his larger one. She felt his palm against hers, and a shiver ricocheted through Letty’s body, deep, to blood and bone. He leaned forward.

“We’ll see,” he whispered.

CHAPTER SIX

LETTY WAS SAVED when the salesgirls interrupted them with trays of pastries and fruit and juices, followed closely behind by yet more racks of clothes for her to consider.

A proper breakfast tray soon followed with maple bacon pancakes drizzled in maple syrup, hash brown potatoes and hot fried sausages. Thus fortified, Letty spent another hour trying on all the clothes she liked in that luxury store. Then they moved to a designer boutique. Then an exclusive department store.

By the end of the afternoon, Darius had bought her so many bags of clothes, he’d had to call his bodyguard and driver down to Fifth Avenue to carry everything back to the penthouse.

He took her to a world-famous jewelry store where they were ushered to an exclusive, private floor. She tried to protest, for about the thirtieth time. “You really don’t need to keep spending more money on me!”

Darius held up a twenty-carat diamond necklace with a critical eye. “You’re going to be my wife. Of course you need clothes.”

“Those are diamonds.”

He grinned. “Hard, sparkling clothes.”

She harrumphed. “You’re wasting your money.”

“So let me waste it. What do you care?” Lifting his eyebrow, he said mildly, “I seem to recall your saying you hate me. So why not make me suffer?”

Why not indeed? Put that way, it didn’t sound so unreasonable. “You do have it coming.”

Setting the necklace down, he looked at her with a heavily lidded gaze.

“And I intend to take it.” Turning back to the jeweler, he nodded toward the diamond necklace. “Starting with that.”

But though Darius insisted on buying her an entire wardrobe of fancy clothes, he was never satisfied by any of the ball gowns she tried on. Truth be told, even Letty thought most of them hideous. A hoop skirt on a baby bump? She looked like a cartoon hippo.

In spite of Letty’s misgivings, the afternoon flew by in an irresistible whirlwind of small pleasures. Her new wardrobe wasn’t comprised of minimalist black and gray clothes as he had originally suggested, currently popular with chic society women, nor were they the plain, sensible, washing-machine-ready clothes she’d worn for the last ten years. No.

Darius had watched her carefully as she’d tried on each outfit, and he seemed to notice the colors that made her face light up with joy. Bright, vivid jewel tones—emerald green, cerulean blue, fuchsia, ruby red—in impractical sensual fabrics like silk.

“We’ll take it,” he would say immediately.

Letty felt guilty revealing her own pleasure, but she couldn’t help herself. For so long, survival had been her only goal. She couldn’t remember the last time that her happiness had mattered to anyone, least of all her.

But Darius treated her as if her happiness was actually the main goal.

Because I carry his baby inside me, she told herself, as she changed her clothes yet again in a private dressing room.

But his hot dark gaze had told her it was more than that. He didn’t just want custody over their baby.

He wanted to possess Letty, too.

You will sleep in my bed. Naked. Every single night.

She shivered, then tried on yet another formal gown, this one made of a slinky knit fabric in a delicious shade of hot pink, her favorite color.

The dress fell softly over her body. Reaching back, she couldn’t quite zip it all the way. She looked at herself in the mirror.

The long stretchy gown fit perfectly over her pregnant body, curving over her full breasts and huge belly. She liked it, but weren’t pregnant women supposed to wear tent dresses?

“I want to see,” Darius’s voice commanded outside the dressing room. She took a deep breath, then came out, her cheeks hot.

“What do you think?” she said timidly.

His expression said everything. He walked slowly around her, looking up and down her body in a way that made her shiver inside.

“That,” he said softly, “is the dress.”

She bit her lip. “I’m afraid it’s too formfitting…”

“It’s perfect.”

“I couldn’t zip it all the way up…”

Drawing close, he wrapped his arms around her. She felt his arms brush against her body as he pulled on the zipper. His eyes never left hers as he towered over her, so close. He made her breathless.

A hint of a smile lifted the edges of his cruel, sensual mouth. He cupped her cheek, then stroked down her throat. “The necklace will be perfect here. Against your skin.”

Looking down, she realized how low cut the gown was. Her cheeks went redder. “I shouldn’t wear this.”

“Why?”

“It’s too revealing. Everyone will stare.”

“They will stare regardless.”

“Because I’m the daughter of a criminal.”

“Because you’re an incredibly beautiful woman.”

At his soft words, Letty’s throat suddenly hurt. “You don’t realize how much they hate me.” Her eyes stung as she pushed away. “When they see me…it’ll be like dropping raw meat in a shark tank. And the more they notice me, the more they’ll rip me apart.” She took a deep breath, tried to smile. “I sound like I’m complaining. I’m not. I can handle it. I’m used to it. But…”

“But what?”

She looked down at the floor.

“Letty?”

She said in a small voice, “I don’t want them to say rude things about you at your own party. And they will if I’m your date.”

Reaching out, he lifted her chin. “I can take care of myself, agape mou,” he said in a low voice. “When will you learn that?”

His dark gaze fell to her mouth, and Letty’s whole body tightened as, for a moment, she wondered if he was going to kiss her, right there in the luxurious store. For a wild moment, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

He turned to the nearest salesgirl. “We’ll take this dress. Wrap it up. We need shoes to match.”

Letty tried on ten pairs before she found stiletto heels that made her gasp at their outrageous beauty.

“Those,” Darius said, looking at Letty’s face.

“No, I couldn’t possibly. They’re too impractical. I’ll never wear them again!” She looked doubtfully at her feet, wobbling in the high heels. “I’m not even sure I can wear them now.”

But even as she protested, she couldn’t look away from the beautiful shoes, which were encrusted with glittery pink crystals and had a red sole.

“We’ll take them,” he told the salesgirl firmly.

Though they pinched Letty’s toes and made her wobble ever so slightly, she was filled with joy as she sat down and handed the precious pink crystal stilettos to the salesgirl. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had anything so outrageous, just because of their beauty. And their cost! She was trying not to think about owning shoes worth three months’ rent. And when would she ever wear them again? Working as a waitress? Going to the grocery store?

It was wicked, letting him buy her these shoes. Letting him buy her so many things, when after tonight, he’d likely never want to see her again.

She would just leave everything behind, she decided. Most of the clothes could be returned, unworn, with tags. She’d have nothing to feel guilty about when he tossed her out of his life. Nothing!

“Now—” Darius’s gaze lingered on her lips, then dropped lower “—lingerie.”

Letty made a sound like a squeak. “Forget it!”

“Ah. You intend to wear nothing beneath your gown tonight? I approve.”

Her cheeks burned. “Of course I’m going to wear something!”

“Then you need undergarments.” He nodded toward three hovering salesgirls. “Get us a selection of lingerie that would suit the gown.”

They departed in a rush to obey.

“I hope you don’t expect me to try those on for you,” Letty said sulkily.

“No?” He looked at her lazily. “Maybe later.”

Her blush deepened.

Right here, in the exclusive department store, with strangers everywhere, Darius was looking at Letty as if he wanted nothing more than to drag her into a changing room and roughly make love to her. Possibly while she was wearing nothing but those pink crystal stilettos. Not a bad idea…

She blinked, realizing she’d been licking her lips. She put her hand unsteadily to her head. What was happening? Was she losing all her morals over a pair of beautiful shoes and for the body of a dangerously beautiful man?

Except Darius wasn’t just beautiful. He was also the only man she’d ever slept with. The only man she’d ever been in love with. She was even now carrying his child deep inside her. He wanted her in his bed. He wanted to marry her. All of those things together were likely to distract any woman.

And with every moment, she felt herself being drawn into his world. Remembering what it was like when money was no object. To be without worry or care.

To be cherished.

It had been a long time since she’d felt that way. She’d been a lonely teenager, far happier spending her time with the estate staff, pets or books instead of other debutantes. At fourteen, she’d fallen hopelessly for Darius, the chauffeur’s son, six years older and totally out of her league. Funny now to recall that she’d actually imagined herself to be unhappy then.

She’d discovered soon after what unhappiness really meant, when her beloved mother, the heart of their home, had suddenly fallen ill. She’d wasted away and died within months.

Her father had been gutted. A few years later, he’d gone to prison. Letty had tried to be tough. She’d tried to be strong. She’d hadn’t let herself think. Hadn’t let herself feel.

But now…

For the first time in years she realized how it felt to be truly looked after. To be cared for. As the salesgirls wrapped up a thousand dollars’ worth of silky lingerie, she tried to tell herself it was just an illusion. Exactly like Cinderella. After midnight tonight it would all disappear.

Darius signed the credit card receipt, smiling at her out of the corner of his eye. “Is there anything else you desire?”

Letty looked at him, her heart in her throat. Then she just shook her head.

“It’s growing late.” He took her hand. “We have one more place to go.”

The bodyguard had already left in Darius’s sports car filled with bags. As his driver walked ahead, weighed down by yet more bags, toward the waiting town car, Darius never let go of her hand. His dark eyes glowed down at her as the sun slipped down between the skyscrapers, toward a horizon she couldn’t see.

Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, but as they climbed into the back of the elegant car, emotion squeezed her heart as she looked at him. All day, Darius had been beside her, ready to push through any crowds, to make sure that she got—in his opinion—proper attention. When she was thirsty, when she was hungry, when she was tired, he seemed to know even before she did, and like a miracle, whatever she desired would instantly appear.

It was as if she were no longer alone. Someone else was looking out for her. Someone tough and strong. Someone who made her feel safe.

Safe?

She shook herself hard. Darius was dangerous. Selfish. Arrogant and cold.

He frowned at her in the backseat. “Are you crying?”

She wiped her tears. “Nope.”

“Letty.”

“I’m sorry. I just…” She faltered. “You’ve been so kind.”

“Buying you clothes?” he said incredulously. He gave a low laugh. “Is that all it takes?”

It was more than the clothes, far more, but she couldn’t explain. She said miserably, “I shouldn’t go with you to the ball tonight.”

His mouth turned down grimly. “You’re going.”

“Don’t you understand? It’ll only cause you trouble.”

“Stop trying to protect me,” he said evenly. “I mean it.”

“But—”

“It’s not your job to protect me. It’s my job to protect you now. And our baby. Never again insult me by insinuating I am incapable of it.” At her expression, he said more gently, “Don’t you understand, Letty? I will watch over you. I’ll make sure no one ever hurts you again. You’ll always be taken care of now. You’re safe.”

She was suddenly shaking as the town car drove down the street. How she wished it were true! How she wished she could believe in him, as she had so long ago.

The car door opened. Looking up in surprise at Darius’s driver, who was holding it open, Letty looked back at Darius. He gave her a cheeky grin.

“I’m just dropping you off. This is the best day spa in the city. Collins is bringing your gown and everything else you’ll need for the ball tonight. I’ll collect you here at eight.”

“A day spa? Why?”

“You deserve some pampering. Enjoy yourself.” He leaned forward in the car’s backseat. She felt his warmth and breathed in his scent as he brushed back her hair and whispered in her ear, “I’ll be back for you soon.”

As he drew back, her heart beat rapidly, and she felt prickles of sensation and desire course through her body, down her spine and over her skin.

And all he’d done was whisper in her ear!

Oh, this was bad.

Her legs were shaky as she stepped out of the car and was whisked into the gorgeously bright day spa with its tall windows, green plants and kitschy pink furniture. A team of specialists, including massage therapists, beauty therapists, stylists and more, surrounded her, moaning about Letty’s cuticles, her tense shoulders, her dry skin…

Hours passed in a flash. Her nails were done and her muscles rubbed and her skin freshened until dewy. Hairstylists and makeup artists came next, and once they were done, it was nearly eight.

Letty put on the new silk bra and panties, the perfectly fitting pink gown and sparkly stiletto heels. She looked at herself in the mirror.

Her long, freshly shaped dark hair was now glossy and shiny and bouncy from the hairstylist’s efforts. Red lipstick made her look glamorous, and her eyes were emphasized with dark liner and even a few false eyelashes for drama. Her full breasts, pushed up by the bra, were laid out like a platter in the knit pink dress, her hips thrust forward by the stilettos, her voluptuous belly the star.

She was dazzled by her own image. She barely recognized herself.

“Wait until Mr. Kyrillos sees you,” the proprietress of the spa said with a broad smile. “Our finest creation!” There was a whisper, then a gasp. “He’s here!”

Nervously, Letty came down into the foyer. She wondered if he would think she looked silly. She couldn’t bear it if her appearance embarrassed him, on top of everything else.

But as Darius came into the foyer, she saw his face. And she knew he approved. Deeply.

“You look incredible,” he whispered. “So beautiful.”

She gave him a shy smile. “You don’t look so bad yourself.”

The truth was, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. His hard jaw was freshly shaved, and his dark eyes wickedly bright. He looked impossibly handsome, tall and broad-shouldered in his sophisticated black tuxedo, which was obviously tailored. No tuxedo off the rack could have fit his muscled body so perfectly.

Wordlessly, Darius held out his arm.

Wrapping her hand around his hard, thick bicep, she shivered, remembering how six months ago, she’d felt his naked, powerful body over hers. Inside hers. She nearly stumbled at the memory.

He stopped.

“Sorry, I’m still getting the hang of my shoes,” she lied. She couldn’t explain that it wasn’t the stilettos that had made her stumble, but the memory of that hot February night they’d conceived their baby.

A night that would never happen again, she thought wistfully. After tonight, he’d run away from her so fast that there would be flames left on the ground, like in a cartoon.

This time, a limousine waited for them. Collins, the driver, wore his formal uniform with a peaked cap as he held open her passenger door.

“Where is the ball this year?” she asked Darius.

“The Corlandt,” he said, naming a venue that was nearly as famous as the Met or Frick or Whitney.

She gulped. It was even worse than she’d thought. As the limo took them uptown, she felt sick with dread. She looked out the window, frantically trying to build ice around her heart and get herself back into a place where she was too well armored to feel any attack.

But her newly scrubbed skin felt far too thin now. Wearing this beautiful dress, and being with Darius, she felt vulnerable. She felt visible. She felt raw.

Even though she no longer loved him, she still didn’t want him hurt because of her. She tried to tell herself it would be for his own good, so he’d realize they had no future. But she couldn’t bear the thought of what was about to happen.

All too soon, the limo arrived. Looking out at the crowds and red carpet and paparazzi, Letty couldn’t breathe. Collins got out and opened their door.

Darius went first. There was a low roar from the crowds, watching from behind the cordons of the red carpet, at seeing Darius Kyrillos, the host of the evening and currently New York’s most famous billionaire bachelor, get out of the limo, gorgeous in his tuxedo. As cameras flashed in the darkening twilight, he gave a brusque wave.

Looking at the photographers, Letty felt so weak she wasn’t sure she could get out of the limo.

Turning back, Darius held out his hand to where she sat quivering in the backseat. He lifted a challenging eyebrow.

Shaking, Letty put her hand in his.

As she exited the limo, a low murmur started amid the photographers and press waiting outside the red carpet as someone recognized Letty.

Then it spread.

There was a gasp of recognition traveling among the photographers and crowd like a rumble of thunder rolling across the ground. The camera flashes went crazy as journalists and celebrity bloggers started screaming at her.

“Letitia Spencer!”

“Where have you been for the last ten years?”

“How does it feel now that your father’s out of prison?”

“Do you feel guilty for your father’s victims as you’re coming to a ball in diamonds?”

“Are you two together?”

“Mr. Kyrillos, with all the city at your feet, why would you date a jailbird’s daughter?”

Darius responded only with a glower as he arrogantly walked past them, Letty gripping his hand tightly. He led her past the reporters and inside the magnificent beaux-arts-style granite building. Only after she’d walked up the steps and past the imposing columns through the oversize door, and he’d shut it behind them, did she exhale. Immediately, he pulled her close. Letty closed her eyes, still shaking as she breathed in his strength, his warmth, his comfort.

“It’s over,” he said softly as he finally drew back, tucking back a dark tendril of her hair behind her ear. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“You think it’s over?” She gave him a trembling smile. “It’s only just begun.”

Darius’s expression darkened, but they were interrupted as a famous white-haired society matron covered in jewels entered the foyer behind them. Her face brightened when she saw Darius. She immediately left her much younger date to come forward and give him air-kisses.

“Darius, how lovely to see you! Thank you again for hosting this important event.” She simpered. “Though I think there will be many broken hearts when they see you brought a date—”

But as the matron turned to Letty, her smile froze. Her expression changed to shock, then outrage.

“Hello, Mrs. Alexander,” Letty said bashfully. “I don’t know if you remember, but I used to go to school with your daughter, Poppy. We were both debutantes at the—”

“Stop.” The woman’s eyes blazed. “Don’t you dare speak to me.” Looking back at Darius, she hissed, “Do you know who this girl is? What she’s done?”

He looked at her coldly. “Of course I know who Letty is. We’ve been friends since childhood. And as for what she’s done—I think you have her confused with her father.”

The woman turned to Letty with narrowed eyes. “You have some nerve coming here. Your father stole money from nearly every person attending tonight.” She looked at Darius incredulously. “And you are insane to bring her. Take my advice. Send Letitia Spencer straight out the door. Or you might find that you suddenly have no guests, and your charity will suffer. For what? So you can get that little tart in your bed?” She looked pointedly at Letty’s belly. “Or perhaps you did that already?”

Letty’s cheeks went hot. She suddenly felt like a tart, too, wearing this low-cut, formfitting pink dress that showed off every curve. Beneath the society matron’s scrutiny, even her beautiful sparkly shoes lost their gleam, and suddenly just pinched her feet.

“It’s only out of respect for those poor foster children that I’m not leaving here right now.” The woman glared between them, then flounced away in her jewels and fluttering silk sleeves.

Letty was left paralyzed from the ambush.

“Don’t listen to her,” Darius said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “She’s a witch.”

“I don’t blame her for being mad,” Letty said in a low voice. “Her family lost a lot of money. Tens of millions.”

“It obviously hasn’t cut into her jewelry and plastic-surgery budget. Forget her. Let’s go in.”

Wrapping her arm securely over his, he marched her into the ballroom as cheerfully as a revolutionary leading a French aristocrat to the guillotine.

But it was no good. The rest of the evening was just as Letty had feared. As lovely and magical as the afternoon had been, the ball sucked the joy out of everything.

Darius insisted on keeping her by his side as he greeted his society guests, each of whom had paid thousands of dollars to attend this ball, ostensibly for the benefit of college scholarships for foster kids but mostly just to have a good excuse to party with friends and show off new couture.

Letty felt their hostile stares, though with Darius beside her, none were as brave or foolhardy as Mrs. Alexander. None of them said anything to her face. Instead, the cream of New York society just stared at her in bewildered horror, as if she had a contagious and fatal disease, then looked at Darius as if they were waiting for him to reveal the punch line of whatever joke had inspired him to bring a pariah like Letitia Spencer to the Fall Ball when he could have had any beauty in the city for the asking.

She heard whispers and felt their hard stares as she and Darius passed through the crowds in the ballroom. When he briefly left her to get drinks, she felt vulnerable, alone. She kept her eyes focused on the floor, trying to be quiet and invisible, as if facing wild animals. If they didn’t notice her, they might not tear her to shreds with their teeth and claws.

It didn’t work.

Within moments, three former debutantes blocked her like bouncers at a bar.

“Well, well, well.” A skinny young woman in a designer gown gave her a hard-edged smile. “Letitia Spencer. This is a surprise. Isn’t it, Caroline?”

“A big surprise.”

Letty vaguely recognized the two women from her school, where they’d been a year older. They were looking at her now with the cold expressions of mob enforcers. She could suddenly imagine how her father must have felt right before that thug had broken his arm.

But the third woman stood a slight distance from the first two. It was Poppy Alexander. She and Letty had once been study partners, sophomore year. Poppy just stood there, looking pale and uneasy.

“Excuse me.” Letty backed away. “I don’t want any trouble.”

“You don’t want trouble?” The first woman’s lip twisted scornfully. “How very amusing.”

“Amusing,” Caroline echoed with a sneer.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“You’re a disgrace to society.”

“If you had any decency, you’d disappear or die.”

Poppy stood silently beside her friends, looking faintly sick, as if she wished she were a million miles away. Letty sympathized with that feeling.

The first woman continued with a sneer, “You might think you’re safe on Darius Kyrillos’s arm, but…”

“Ah, there you are, Letty,” Darius said smoothly, coming up behind them. “I brought your drink.” Turning to the other women, he gave a charming smile. “Ah. Augusta. Caroline. And Poppy Alexander. How lovely to see you.”

“Hello, Darius,” they cooed with weak smiles, then departed, the first two with a final venomous glance at Letty, Poppy hanging her head, looking guilty and ashamed.

Emotions Letty knew well.

“Everything all right?” Darius murmured after they left.

She exhaled, blinking fast. “Fine. Just fine.”

The night only got worse. It was past ten when the formal dinner was finally served, and Letty felt half-starved as she sat down beside Darius at the prestigious head table. But as she felt the glares from the four other couples at the table, she could barely eat a bite of salad or the lobster with white truffle cream. At any moment, she half expected one of the hedge fund millionaires or society wives might smash a three-hundred-dollar champagne bottle against the table and attack her with it.

That might have been preferable to the waves of unspoken hatred overtaking her like a blast of heat from all sides. During the unendurably long meal, Darius tried several times to start conversations with the others at the table. Each time, he succeeded. Until he tried to include her. Then the conversation instantly died.

Finally, Letty could stand it no longer.

“Excuse me,” she breathed, rising from her seat. “I have to—”

She couldn’t finish her sentence. Turning, she rushed past all the other tables and out of the ballroom. Going down the long hall, she found a ladies’ bathroom, where she was violently sick. Going to the sink, she washed out her mouth. She looked at herself wanly in the mirror. She felt like she’d rather die than go back into that ballroom and see Darius trying to stick up for her.

Better for her to just leave quietly. Better for both of them.

After lingering as long as she could in the cool quiet of the empty, marble bathroom, with the old-fashioned elegance of a more genteel era, she went out into the hallway.

She found Darius waiting for her, smolderingly handsome in his tuxedo, leaning against the wall with his arms folded and his jaw tight.

“Are you all right?”

He was angry. She could hear it in his voice. She stopped, barely holding back her tears. “Have you seen enough?” she choked out. “You’re surely not enough of an idiot to marry me.”

He came closer in the empty hallway, with its plush carpets and gold light fixtures. She tensed, waiting for him to tell her he’d obviously made a mistake, bringing her to his ball, and that there was no way he would marry her now or in fact ever wanted to see her again. She waited for him to give her what she’d wanted and set her free.

Except in this moment the thought didn’t make her as happy as it once did.

He narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t realize how bad it was for you.”

She’d successfully fought back tears all night. But she could do it no longer. Not now, when the illusion of having a protector—even for a night—was coming to an end.

Letty took a deep breath, trying to ignore the lump in her throat, wiping her eyes before he’d see the tears. She tried to smile. “But now you know. So tomorrow I’ll go to Rochester with my father. You can continue to be rich and famous and popular here. You can visit our baby anytime you want…” Something in his eyes made her voice trail off uncertainly. “If you even want to see our baby anymore,” she whispered.

His eyes suddenly blazed with cold fury. “No.”

“What?”

He gripped her arm. “I said no.”

She tried to pull away, but couldn’t. “What are you doing?”

“What I should have done the moment we arrived here.”

He pulled her grimly down the hall, back toward the ballroom.

“No,” she choked out, struggling. “Please. I can’t go back in there. Don’t make me…”

Darius was merciless. He dragged her back into the enormous ballroom, with its high ceiling and crystal chandeliers. He gripped her wrist as she limped behind him in the tight stiletto shoes and pink dress, going past all the big round tables, where a thousand people were now drinking after-dinner brandies and coffees and the men, at least, were eating desserts. Letty felt each ten-person table fall silent as they went by. She felt everyone’s judgment. Their blame. Their hatred.

Ruthlessly, Darius pulled her through the ballroom, leaving people silent in their wake. As he walked past their own table, he grabbed his glass of champagne. Crossing the small dance floor, he dragged her up the stairs to the stage, where, still holding her wrist, he took the microphone at the podium. He cleared his throat.

Letty’s knees were trembling with fear. She wished she’d never come here—wished she’d never taken a single risk—would have given twenty years of her life to be back at her tiny apartment, snug on the sofa with a blanket over her head!

“Good evening,” Darius said into the microphone. His husky, commanding voice rang over the ballroom. A spotlight fell on him. “For those of you I haven’t yet met personally, I’m Darius Kyrillos. Thank you for coming to my party, the event kicking off the New York fall social season, and thank you for supporting scholarships for kids in need. It’s because of you that many deserving youngsters will be able to go to college or learn a trade.”

A smattering of applause ensued; much less enthusiastic than it would have been if Letty hadn’t been standing with him on stage. She was ruining everything, she thought unhappily. Even for those kids who needed help. She hated herself. Almost as much as she hated him.

Darius deliberately turned away from the microphone to give her a searching glance, and her stomach fell to the floor. Here it comes, she thought. He’s going to announce that he brought me here as a joke and have me thrown me out. She was social poison, so he really had no choice but to distance himself. This was exactly what she’d expected.

She just hadn’t expected it to hurt so much when it happened.

Darius’s lips twisted. He turned back to the microphone. “Most of you know this beautiful woman on stage with me. Miss Letitia Spencer.” There was a low hiss across the ballroom, a rumble of muffled booing. He responded with a charming smile. “Since we’re all friends, I wanted you to be the first to know… I just asked her to marry me.”

Letty’s eyes went wide. What? Why would he say that? Was he insane?

“And she has accepted,” he finished calmly. “So I want you all to be the first to wish us joy.”

This time, the gasp came from Letty. Forget insane. Was he suicidal?

The low hisses and boos changed to ugly muttering across the ballroom, angry, obscene words that made Letty squirm. Instinctively, she covered her belly with her arms to protect her unborn baby from the cruel words.

But Darius’s smile only widened as he put his large hand over hers, on her belly.

“We’re expecting a baby, too. All of this has left me so overwhelmed with joy, I want to share it with all of you. Now. Some of you might know of her father’s troubles…”

A white-haired man, unable to contain himself any longer, sprang up from his table. “Howard Spencer defrauded my company of millions of dollars!” he cried, shaking his fist. “We were only repaid a fraction of what we lost!”

A low buzz of rage hummed around him.

“Letty’s father is a criminal,” Darius agreed. “He abused your trust, and I know over half of what he stole is still unaccounted for. But Letty did nothing wrong. Her only crime was loving a father who didn’t deserve it. That’s why I’ve decided, in my future bride’s honor, to make amends.”

Suddenly, it was dead quiet across the tables.

Darius held his champagne glass high. “I will personally pay back every penny her father stole.”

A collective gasp ripped through the ballroom.

The white-haired man staggered back. “But that’s…five billion dollars!”

“So it is,” Darius said mildly. He looked over the crowd. “So if your family is still owed money by Howard Spencer, I personally guarantee repayment. All in honor of my beautiful…innocent…unfairly hounded…bride.” Turning back toward Letty on stage, he held up his champagne glass and said into the microphone, “To Letitia Spencer!”

As photographers rushed forward, Letty felt faint. Camera flashes lit up everywhere. There was a rumble of noise, of shouts and gasps and chairs hastily pushed aside as a thousand people scrambled to their feet and lifted their champagne glasses into the air.

“Letitia Spencer!” they cried joyfully.

CHAPTER SEVEN

IT WASN’T EVERY day a man spent five billion dollars on a whim.

Darius hadn’t intended to do it. He’d had a different surprise in mind for Letty tonight: a black velvet box hidden in the pocket of his tuxedo jacket, which he’d planned to spring on her as soon as the evening was over and all her overblown fears had proved unfounded.

Instead, he’d realized how much she’d endured over the last ten years. Alone. While he’d been happily free to live an anonymous life and make his fortune.

Standing in the hallway, when he’d seen her come out of the bathroom looking shattered and as pale as a ghost, he’d finally realized the toll it had taken on her. And if this was how people treated Letty now, how much worse had it been ten years ago, when their rage had been white-hot?

He’d been forced to ask himself: If Letty had actually shown up the night they were going to run away together and told him about her father’s confession, what would have happened?

Darius would have of course insisted she marry him anyway. After all, what did her father’s stupid investment fund have to do with their love?

But as her husband, he would have been at her side throughout the scandal and media circus of a trial. He might not have received the critical early loan that enabled him to build his software, to hire employees, to lease his first office space. He would have been too tainted by association as Howard Spencer’s son-in-law.

If Letty hadn’t set him free, he might have been unemployable, unable to easily provide for his wife or children. He might be living in that tiny Brooklyn apartment, too, struggling with the loss of his dreams. Struggling to provide for his family. Struggling not to feel like a failure as a man.

It was Letty’s sacrifice ten years ago that had made his current success possible.

While he’d been triumphantly building his billion-dollar company, she’d lived in poverty, suffering endless humiliations for a crime that wasn’t even hers. And she’d kept her sacrifice a secret, so he’d never once had to feel guilty about deserting her.

Even now, she continued to protect him. She’d warned him what would happen if he brought her as his date. And now he’d finally seen how the members of the so-called upper class had treated her all this time. He’d watched Letty bear their insults without complaint. And he’d realized her stigma was so bad that, in spite of his arrogant earlier assumption, his presence alone wasn’t enough to shelter her.

He knew how it felt to be treated badly.

He’d once been the poorest child in his village, mocked as an unloved bastard. He was now the most beloved, feared man of Heraklios. He did pretty well in Manhattan, too. And London. And Paris and Rome, Sydney and Tokyo.

Money could buy everything from houses to souls.

Money made the man.

It astonished him that not everyone realized this. Some people seemed to think love was the most important thing. They were either fools, Darius thought grimly, or gluttons for punishment. He’d learned his own lesson well. The sick truth was that love only led to pain.

Love was a pale facsimile of money. Love begged.

Money demanded.

So when Darius had seen how badly New York society had treated Letty for all these years—these people who didn’t have a fraction of her kindness or her loyalty or her heart—ice had seized his soul.

Especially when he’d realized that he’d treated her even worse. After a decade of ignoring her, he’d taken revenge for her so-called sins through cold seduction, insults and threats.

His jaw tightened. He would pay that debt.

Darius didn’t love her. The part of his heart that had once craved love had been burned away. Love wasn’t something he ever wanted to feel for anyone.

But there were other qualities Darius did believe in.

Honor.

Loyalty.

Protecting his woman.

So he’d settled the matter, once and for all.

Now Letty would be the most popular girl in the city. Every person who’d once treated her shabbily would be begging for an invitation to their wedding. Begging to be her friend.

At the moment of Darius’s triumph, as he toasted her on stage, he turned to face Letty at the podium. Rough, raw desire surged through his body as he looked at her—his woman now, his—lush and pregnant and obscenely beautiful in that pink gown, which slid over her breasts and belly like a caress.

She stood unsteadily in those ridiculous stiletto heels, beneath the blinding spotlight, as a thousand people applauded from the darkness. People who had treated her like garbage just minutes before started chanting her name. Camera flashes lit up the darkness as reporters shouted questions.

“Miss Spencer, what’s it like to be loved to the tune of five billion dollars?”

“When’s the wedding?”

“When’s your baby due?”

“How does it feel to suddenly be the most popular girl in New York?”

Letty looked at Darius with the expression of a terrified deer, and he realized she wasn’t enjoying this as much as he was.

Turning back to the microphone with a smile, Darius answered for her. “The wedding will be soon. No plans yet. Our baby will be born soon, too.” He looked past the reporters to the well-heeled crowd. “That’s all. Thank you for your support! Enjoy your night. And since you’re now all so much richer, don’t forget to be generous to the scholarship fund—it’s for the kids.” Setting his empty champagne glass on the podium, he glanced at the full orchestra. “Let’s start the music!”

“Kick off the dancing, Darius!” someone shouted from the back.

“Yes, the first dance to you and Letty!” someone else cried.

Darius led her down the steps from the stage, and as they reached the dance floor, the music started, a slow, romantic song he’d purposefully requested from the orchestra earlier because he knew Letty would remember it from that long-ago summer.

He was right. She stopped when she heard it, eyes wide.

Darius looked down at her with a crooked half smile. “What do you say? Will you dance with me, Letty?”

She looked around at all the people who had treated her with such contempt for the last ten years, now beaming at her as if they were best friends.

“Why are they acting as if they like me?” she said softly, for his ears alone.

“People love to talk about character and loyalty and love. They mean money.” He allowed himself a grim smile. “Now the money’s been paid, so they can love you again.”

Letty’s head snapped back to look at him. Her big hazel eyes, fringed with dark lashes, were wide, as if he were a superhero who’d flown down from the sky. “Why did you do it, Darius? Why pay five billion dollars for a debt that isn’t yours?”

The music swirled around them like a whirlwind. “Do you remember our old waltz?”

Her forehead creased. “Of course…” She looked back at the people yelling encouragement for them to dance. She bit her lip. “But not in front of everyone…”

“Now.” Darius pulled her against his tuxedo-clad body. “Dance with me.”

Letty’s long dark hair was falling softly around her beautiful face to her shoulders, nestling against the diamonds sparkling around her neck. He’d already wanted her, but as he felt her body in his arms, and the crush of her belly and swollen breasts against his chest, he wanted her even more.

Just like that long-ago summer…

“Come on, Letty,” he said in a low voice. “Let’s show them all we don’t give a damn.”

He moved commandingly onto the dance floor, leading her in the first steps of the waltz he’d helped her practice for her debutante ball long ago, the spring of her senior year. They’d practiced the waltz over and over in the sunlit spring flower meadow on the Fairholme estate, overlooking the sparkling bay, as music sang from her phone.

They’d started out as friends and ended as something else entirely.

When she’d left for her debutante ball in Manhattan that May, looking beautiful beyond belief in her white dress, Darius spent the whole evening prowling the meadow in a rage, hating the Harvard boy who was her date.

He’d been shocked when Letty came back early, whispering, “I didn’t want to dance with anyone but you…”

Darius had taken one look at Letty’s joyous, upturned face surrounded by spring flowers, and then he, the chauffeur’s son, had done the unthinkable: he’d wrapped her in his powerful arms and kissed her…

Now, as he swirled her around in that waltz, it was like going back in time. The audience standing on the edge of the dance floor clapped their approval. In this moment, in this place, Darius and Letty were the king and queen of the city, the pinnacle of all his youthful dreams.

But he barely noticed the crowds. There was only Letty. He was back in that meadow, a young man so sure of his own heart, so naively enthusiastic about his future, dancing with the beautiful princess he’d dreamed about, the one he could never deserve. And, oh, how he’d craved her to his very core…

Now, Darius pulled her more indecently close to his hard, aching body than any waltz allowed. She lifted her luminous gaze to his, visibly holding her breath. The electricity between them suddenly sizzled with heat.

He stopped dancing. Louder than the music, he heard the rush of his blood in his ears, the pounding of his own heart.

He needed her in his bed.

Now.

The music abruptly ended, and the ballroom exploded in applause echoing from the high ceiling. Without a word, Darius led her from the dance floor. He pulled her through the crowds, which parted for them like magic. Compliments and cheers followed them. Everywhere, people were apologizing to Letty for how badly they’d treated her. He recognized Poppy Alexander.

“I’m so sorry, Letty,” the girl blurted out. “I was afraid to be your friend. I knew it wasn’t your fault, what happened, but I was a coward…”

“That’s all right, Poppy,” Letty replied gently. She looked around at everyone else. “I don’t blame anyone.”

Darius thought about the dragon Poppy had for a mother, and he couldn’t blame her for being scared. Until he thought of how bad Letty’s life had been for the last decade, and he didn’t think any of them deserved another minute of Letty’s time.

He swept Letty away without looking back. He didn’t care about anyone or anything right now, except getting her into his bed.

Darius pulled his phone from his tuxedo jacket pocket. By the time they exited the stately beaux-arts building, his limo was waiting at the curb. Collins leaped out and opened the passenger door.

The second they were in the backseat, and the door closed behind them, Darius pulled Letty roughly into his arms and kissed her.

Her lips were sweet as sin. She trembled, her curves melting against him. His whole body was hard with need. He had to have her.

“Sir?” said Collins from the driver’s seat.

“Home,” he said hoarsely. “As fast as you can.”

Then he pressed the button that raised the barrier between front and back seats. Just those few seconds were agony. But he was not willing to share Letty with anyone. He’d shared her enough.

She belonged to him now. To him alone.

Once they had privacy in the backseat, he kissed her passionately as the limo moved through the sparkling streets of the lit-up city at midnight. But all he could see was her sensual beauty. All he could feel was the soft brush of her long dark hair, and her warm skin like silk beneath his hands. He pushed her back against the leather seat, devouring her soft lips, kissing her neck, running his hands over her full breasts overflowing the tight pink bodice of her dress.

He kissed her savagely, biting and sucking her lower lip. A gasp of need came from her throat as she returned his kiss with matching fire, gripping his shoulders through his tuxedo jacket. He kissed slowly down her neck as her head fell back, her eyes closed, her expression one of ecstasy.

When he saw that, it was all he could do not to take her, right here in the back of the limo. He was unconsciously reaching for his fly when he realized they’d stopped.

Resurfacing from his haze of desire, he saw the limo was parked beneath the porte cochere in front of his building. Just in time, too. He glanced at Letty, stretched back against the smooth calfskin leather seat. Her big hazel eyes were smoky with passion, her dark hair mussed, her pink dress disheveled. Another moment and he would have yanked up her dress and roughly pushed inside her.

That wasn’t how he wanted this night to be, fast and brutish in the back of a limo. No. After the disaster of their first night together, when he’d taken her virginity then insulted her and tossed her out of the penthouse into the snow, he wanted this night to be perfect.

He would finally treat Letitia Spencer, the forbidden princess of his youth, as she deserved to be treated.

He would enjoy her as he deserved to enjoy her.

Thoroughly.

Reaching over, he smoothed the fabric of Letty’s bodice modestly back over her breasts just as the passenger door opened behind him.

Taking her hand, he led her out of the limo and into the elegant lobby, where the doorman greeted him. “Good evening, sir.”

“Good evening, Jones.” Such civilized words. Wearing a tuxedo, Darius knew he must appear civilized on the outside. On the inside, he felt anything but.

Gripping Letty’s hand, he desperately kept himself in check. Neither of them looked at each other as they went through the high-ceilinged lobby, past the front desk to the elevator. Civilized.

But as soon as the door closed behind them, they were in each other’s arms. He pushed her against the wall, kissing her hungrily, desperately.

She breathed against his skin, “I still can’t believe you’re doing this.”

“Kissing you?”

“Giving five billion dollars away. Why did you do it?”

“Don’t you know?” he growled, his lips against hers. “Can’t you guess?”

Panting, she shook her head. “You hate my father…”

Darius’s lip curled as he drew back. “I didn’t do it for him.”

“For your friends?”

“Those aren’t my friends.”

“For the other victims, then. All those hardworking people with pensions. Firemen. Nurses…”

“I’m not that noble.”

The elevator door opened. The floor-to-ceiling windows flooded the penthouse with moonlight. Taking her hand, he led her inside. He could hear the tap of her stiletto heels against the marble.

She stopped, staring up at him.

“Then why?” she whispered.

“I couldn’t stand to see you treated badly,” Darius said huskily, “when all you’ve done is give your love and loyalty to someone who doesn’t deserve it.”

She bit her lip. “I know my father isn’t perfect—”

“Perfect?” His jaw tightened. “He’s a criminal—” He cut himself off, then said, “You’re under my protection now.”

She looked troubled. “Your protection—or your rule?”

“It is the same. I protect what is mine.”

“Our baby.”

His eyes met hers. “And you.”

Letty stared at him, her eyes wide, as if she had no idea how to react. As if she had forgotten what it was like to have anyone properly look after her.

He wondered how long it had been since anyone had tried to take care of her, rather than the other way around. He suspected Letty always sacrificed herself to take care of others—especially that father of hers—while her own heart bled.

“But I’m not yours,” she said quietly. “Not truly. We got pregnant by accident. I didn’t think you were serious about marriage.”

“I am.”

“That commitment is serious, Darius. It means…forever.”

“I know,” he said.

She swallowed, searching his gaze. “I was sure after tonight you’d never want to see me again.”

Taking her hand, he lifted it slowly to his lips. She seemed to hold her breath, watching as he kissed the back of her hand, breathing against her skin. Straightening, he held her hand tightly in his own. “I want to see you tomorrow, and every other tomorrow for the rest of our lives.”

“Darius…”

“You will marry me, Letty,” he said in a low voice. “You know it, and I know it. In your heart, you were always meant to be mine.”

Marry him? For real?

How could she?

Even if Darius no longer hated her, he certainly didn’t love her. And she was starting to fear she could love him again. Perhaps all too easily.

What hope could they have of happiness?

He’d never love her back. All he wished to do was possess her. He offered sex and money, and in return, he’d expect sex and total devotion. For her, those things went together. He wouldn’t have just her body, but her soul.

So why was she still so tempted?

She shivered, caught between fear and desire.

“Are you cold?” he asked huskily, his eyes dark.

“No, I… I…” Hugging her baby bump, she gasped, “I need some fresh air.”

He smiled. “Come with me.”

Still holding her hand, he led her through the moon-bathed penthouse, and she thought dimly how she was getting in the habit of following where he led. But with his hand enveloping hers so protectively, she didn’t want to do anything else.

She still couldn’t believe what he’d done, announcing their engagement, defending her in front of all those people—and then telling the world he intended to pay billions of dollars of his own money to repay what her father had stolen.

She’d been dazed. Then she’d danced with him, the same routine he’d helped her learn so long ago, and she’d been back in that spring meadow, practicing the waltz not for the pimply-faced Harvard boy, who was the nephew of her father’s lawyer, but for Darius, always for him, only for him. As they’d danced in the ballroom, she’d felt time melt away.

Darius was right. She was his. From the very beginning, Darius Kyrillos had been the only man she’d ever wanted. The only man she’d ever loved.

I don’t love him anymore, she told herself desperately. She wouldn’t let him buy her!

Darius led her up an elaborate staircase, then pushed open a glass door that led out onto a private rooftop garden.

Letty gasped at the beauty of the ivy-covered pergola decorated with fairy lights near a lit lap pool gleaming bright blue in the warm September night.

Above them, distant stars sparkled like diamonds across a dark velvety sky. Past the glass walls of the terrace, the night skyline of Manhattan glittered.

She kept her distance from the edge, afraid to go too close. But Darius went right to it. He leaned against the short glass wall, totally unfazed and unafraid of plummeting seventy floors to his death. He looked out at the city.

Letty crept closer, her heart pounding. “This terrace is amazing.”

“All the flowers remind me of home,” he said simply. She wondered if he meant Greece or Fairholme, but didn’t have the nerve to ask. She slowly turned her head, marveling at the lavish beauty of a rooftop garden that treated all of Manhattan as nothing but a backdrop.

“You’re king of the mountain now,” she said softly. “Looking down on a valley of skyscrapers.”

Turning to her, he came forward. Then he abruptly fell to one knee in front of her astonished eyes.

Reaching into his tuxedo jacket pocket, he pulled out a small black velvet box.

“Rule it with me, Letty,” he said quietly. “As my wife.”

Shivering, she put her hand on her heart. “I already said…”

“You said yes when you thought I’d back out. This is a real proposal. I expect a real answer.” He held up the black velvet box. “Letty Spencer, will you do me the honor of marrying me?”

He opened the lid. Inside the black velvet box was an enormous pear-shaped diamond set in platinum. It was the hugest, most outrageous ring she’d ever seen.

But that wasn’t what made her lose her breath.

It was Darius’s face. His dark, yearning eyes. As he looked at her in the moonlight, she saw the man who’d just bruised her with the intensity of his kisses. Who’d just defied all of Manhattan and paid five billion dollars for her. The man whose child she carried.

In his eyes, she saw the shadow of the younger man she’d once loved, strong and kind, with such a good heart. The one who’d loved her so fervently. They were the same.

Letty’s heart skipped a beat.

It’s an illusion, she told herself desperately. He’s not the same. But as she reached out and brushed her fingers against the diamond engagement ring, it sparkled like the stars. Like the lights of this powerful city.

Like the smolder in Darius’s dark eyes.

“It would destroy us,” she said shakily, but what she really meant was it would destroy me.

Darius slowly rose in front of her, until his tall, powerful body towered over hers. Waves of blue light from the pool reflected against him as the warm wind moved across the water. Putting his hand on her cheek, he lowered his head.

“Say yes,” he whispered. “Say you’ll be mine.”

His kiss was tender at first. She felt the rough warmth of his lips, the gentle hold of his arms.

Then his grip tightened. His embrace became hungry, filled with need. Spirals of heat twisted through her body, and she gripped his shoulders. Until he pulled away.

“Say it,” he demanded.

“Yes,” she choked out.

A flash of triumph crossed his starkly handsome face. “You will?”

She nodded, tears in her eyes.

“There will be no going back,” he warned.

“I know.” She tried to ignore the thrill that crept into her heart. Excitement? Terror?

Right or wrong, disaster or not, there was nothing to be done. What he’d said was true. She’d always been his. In many ways, this decision had been made for her long ago.

He slid the diamond ring over the third finger of her left hand. It fit perfectly. She looked down at it, sparkling in the moonlight. “How did you know my ring size?”

“It’s the same ring.”

She frowned. “What?”

“It’s the same I bought for you ten years ago.” His voice was low. “I had it set with a different stone.”

The thought that he’d kept their original ring all these years made her heart ache. Whatever he might say, didn’t that mean he might still care for her, at least a little?

Could love, once lost, ever be regained?

Looking at him with tears in her eyes, she breathed, “Darius…”

“You’re mine now, Letty,” he whispered, kissing her forehead, her eyelids, her cheeks. “You belong to me. Forever.”

Then he kissed her lips as if those, too, were his possession.

Sparks of pleasure went up and down Letty’s body, coiling low and deep inside her, and she felt his hands running down her bare arms, her sides, cupping her breasts over the pink dress.

She fell back against the ivy-covered stone wall. Above them, fairy lights swayed gently in the warm wind, the skyscrapers of Manhattan illuminating the moonlit sky.

Letty’s eyes closed as he kissed his way down her throat. She felt breathless, like she was lost in a dream.

He kissed over the diamond necklace to her bare clavicle and the valley between her full breasts, half revealed above the low-cut bodice of her gown.

Picking her up, he carried her past the sweeping ivy into a half-enclosed room protected on two sides by walls, with a rustic chandelier hanging over a long table. Two leather sofas were arranged around a fireplace and well-stocked bar.

He flicked a switch, and the gas fire lit up. She saw Darius’s face clearly in the flickering firelight as they faced each other silently. The soft wind blew against her hair, her skin.

Slowly, Darius removed his tuxedo jacket and dropped it to the flagstone floor. Coming closer, he unzipped her pink dress. She felt the brush of his fingertips, then the warm night air against her bare skin as her gown dropped to the floor beside his jacket. She stepped out of the fabric, wearing only the diamonds, a lace bra, panties and the wicked pink crystal stiletto heels.

He stepped back, looking at her.

“Incredible,” he breathed in deep masculine appreciation, and she realized that, just as he’d promised, he was seeing her in the lingerie. She scowled.

“Do you always get what you want?” she said accusingly.

“I do,” he said, caressing her cheek. “And now, so will you.”

She licked her lips and felt a thrill of delight as his expression changed to raw desire. Reaching up, she saucily loosened his tuxedo tie, before tugging on it, drawing him closer for a kiss.

It was the first time she’d ever made the first move, and he growled fierce approval. Holding her tight, he kissed her back hungrily.

His hands caressed her naked skin, her arms, her shoulders, the small of her back. And suddenly she couldn’t remove his clothes fast enough. His tie, cuff links, shirt. They all dropped to the floor.

His tanned body, laced with dark hair, looked like sculpted marble in the flickering firelight, all hard muscles and taut belly. She brushed her hand lightly against his chest. His skin felt like silk over steel. Biting her lip, she lifted her eyes to his.

“If I’m yours, Darius,” she whispered, standing in front of him in the half-enclosed room, “you’re mine.”

Brushing back long dark tendrils of her hair, he pulled her roughly into his arms. His hard-muscled chest moved against her full, aching breasts and pregnant belly. The soft wind whispered against her bare skin as he unhooked her silk lace bra, and her breasts sprang free. He looked down at her body and gave a quick breath.

Pressing her breasts together, he cupped their weight in his hands before he lowered his head to suckle one pink, full nipple, then the other.

Shuddering with pleasure, she closed her eyes.

His hands stroked gently, reverently, down her body to her naked belly to her hips, still covered with the tiny silk panties.

Running his hand down her legs, he knelt before her and pulled off one stiletto, then the other, as she balanced against him, her hands gripping his shoulders. She remained standing—barely—as he caressed upward from her manicured toes, to the tender hollows of her knees, and higher still. She swallowed, holding her breath as he stroked up her thighs.

She closed her eyes, heart pounding as he pulled her panties down her legs. She couldn’t move fast enough. He impatiently ripped them off in his powerful hands, tossing the flimsy silk aside.

“Those were expensive—” she protested.

He looked up, and the edges of his cruel, sensual mouth curved upward. “They served their purpose.”

An icy fear suddenly crept through her heart as Letty wondered if she, too, might someday have served her purpose. If he might someday rip her apart, then discard her.

Then all her rational thought fled as, still on his knees, he gripped her hips and moved between her legs.

She felt the warmth of his breath on the most sensitive, intimate part of her body, as she stood naked with the warm night breeze swirling against her skin, as one of New York’s most famous billionaires knelt before her in the firelight, beneath the ivy walls of a rooftop garden.

Holding her tight, he lowered his mouth between her thighs and tasted her with a soft moan. He licked her as if she were a melting ice cream cone in his favorite flavor, creamy and sweet. As she gasped, his rhythm intensified, until he worked her with his tongue, sliding sensuously against her. Pleasure exploded through her body almost immediately, and he gripped her hips, keeping her firmly against his mouth as her body twisted with the sudden intensity of pleasure that left her knees weak and sent spasms all over her body.

She was still dizzy in the heights of pleasure as he rose to his feet and drew her toward the sofa. He lay down first, stretching out naked against the black leather, hard and ready for her. She took a step, then hesitated, biting her lip.

“What is it?”

She tried not to look at how huge he was, his hard shaft jutting arrogantly from his body. She blushed, feeling shy. “Um, what do I do?”

He gave a low, lazy laugh, then pulled her over him.

“I’ll show you,” he said huskily.

He spread her across him on the sofa, her thighs over his hips, his arousal pressing low against her pregnant belly. He reached up, cupping her cheek. As he drew her down for a kiss, her long dark hair fell like a veil against his skin.

The kiss was tender at first. She relaxed into it with a sigh, her body curving over his as his hands roamed gently over her back, her arms, her belly, her breasts. Then his kiss deepened, turning urgent and fierce. Placing his hands on her hips, he lifted her up, positioning himself beneath her.

He slowly lowered her down on him, filling her, inch by delicious inch, in tantalizing slow motion.

She gasped as she felt him inside her, going deep, then deeper still. Her whole body started to tighten, more savagely than it had before.

Lifting her hips, he lowered her again, showing her the rhythm, until her body started to move of its own accord. Closing her eyes with fervent intensity, she rode him, slowly at first, then faster. The pleasure built and built…

Her lips parted in a silent cry as joy burst like fireworks shaking through her body. She heard his low gasp as he, too, exploded, pouring inside her.

She collapsed, falling softly against him on the black leather sofa.

For long moments, he held her tenderly, as if her weight were nothing. Their bodies were still fused, slick with sweat, as he leaned up to kiss her. He felt so solid and strong beneath her. Like a foundation that could never be shaken.

She shivered in his arms. In the half-enclosed outdoor room, the September night was growing cool. But that wasn’t the reason.

The idea of being Darius’s wife had seemed like a recipe for disaster, if not outright doom. And so it would be, if she were tempted into giving him her heart, while in return, he gave her only money.

Letty looked down at the heavy diamond ring, now shining dully on her left hand.

If only Darius could again be the young man she remembered, with the kind nature and forgiving heart. She would willingly give him everything. Not just her body, not just her name, but her heart.

CHAPTER EIGHT

HE WAS A GENIUS, Darius thought as he woke in his bed the next morning with sunlight flooding in through the windows. He looked down at Letty sleeping beside him and smiled. A damn genius. Best five billion dollars ever spent.

And he would spend the rest of his life being thrilled, if it continued paying off like it did last night. The sex had been spectacular. And even more. Something had changed in the way Letty looked at him. He loved the mixture of gratitude and shy hope he saw in her eyes.

He kissed Letty’s temple tenderly. She yawned, stretching like a cat.

“What time is it?” she murmured, her eyes still closed.

“Late,” he said, amused. “Almost noon.”

Her eyes flew open. “Oh, no! I’m late for—” Then she seemed to remember how much had changed in the last twenty-four hours, and that being late for work was no longer an issue. “Oh. Right.” She bit her lip, blushing and looking so adorable that he was tempted to keep her in bed another hour.

It was incredible how much he still wanted her, when they’d made love four times last night—on the rooftop terrace, here in bed, and in the shower when they decided to wash off. Only to promptly get all sweaty again when they returned to bed.

Letty was meant to be his, Darius marveled. He’d never felt so sexually satisfied in his life.

And yet already he wanted more. How was it possible?

He smiled down at her. “Hungry?”

“Starving,” she admitted. “And thirsty.”

“I can solve that.” Rising from the bed, he got a white terry cloth robe and handed her one, too. “Come out to the kitchen.”

She gave a sudden scowl, and even that was adorable. “You didn’t tell me you had staff staying at the penthouse. What if they heard us last night? What if they—”

“There are no live-in staff. I have a housekeeper who comes in four times a week, that’s it.”

She blinked in confusion. “Then who’s going to cook?”

“I’m not totally useless.”

She looked at him with unflattering shock in her eyes. “You can’t cook, Darius.”

“No?” His smile widened to a grin. “Come see.”

She ate her words shortly afterward, sitting in the brightly lit kitchen at the counter, as he served her an omelet to order with tomatoes, bacon and five kinds of cheese, along with orange juice over ice. When she took the first bite of the omelet, her eyes went wide.

“Good, huh?” he said smugly, sitting beside her with his own enormous omelet of ham and cheese, drenched in salsa. Being a sexual hero all night definitely had built his appetite.

And hers, as well. If he felt like a hero, Letty was a sex goddess, he thought. Even now, he felt aware of her, just sitting companionably beside her at the counter with its dazzling view of the city through floor-to-ceiling windows. But he wasn’t looking at the view. He was watching her.

“Delicious,” she moaned softly as she gobbled it down, bite after bite. “We should serve omelets at our wedding.”

He gave a low laugh. “I appreciate the compliment, but I don’t see myself whipping up omelets for a thousand.”

She froze. “A thousand? Guests?”

Gulping black coffee, he shrugged. “Our wedding will be the social event of the year, as you deserve. All of New York society will come and grovel at your feet.”

She didn’t look thrilled. She took another bite of omelet. “That’s not what I want.”

“No?” he said lazily, tucking back a tendril of her dark hair. His eyes traced the creamy skin of her neck, down to the smooth temptation of her clavicle and swell of her breasts above the luxurious white cotton robe. He glanced down to her belt, tied loosely between her breasts and pregnant belly. He had the sudden impulse to sweep all the dishes to the floor, tug open her robe and lean her back naked against the counter.

“A wedding should be a happy occasion.” She shook her head. “Those society people aren’t my friends. They never really were. Why would I invite them?”

“To rub your new status in their faces? I thought you’d glory in your return to status as the queen of it all.”

“Me?” Letty snorted. “I was never queen of anything. As a teenager I never knew the right clothes to wear or understood how to play the society game. I was a total nerd.”

He frowned. “I never saw you that way. I just assumed…”

“That I was a spoiled princess?” She gave him a funny smile. “I was spoiled, though not the way you mean. I always knew I was loved.” Her face was wistful. “My parents loved each other and they loved me.”

Revenge wasn’t Letty’s style, Darius realized. She never showed off or tried to make others feel bad. Even when she was younger, she’d always been most comfortable reading the dusty leather-bound books in Fairholme’s oak-paneled library, baking cakes with the cook in the kitchen or playing with the gardener’s kittens in the yard. Letty never wanted to be the center of attention. She was always more worried about other people’s feelings than her own.

In this respect, Darius thought, the two of them were very different.

“And I had a real home,” she whispered.

Memories of that beautiful gray stone manor on the edge of the sea, surrounded by roses, came to his mind. He said gruffly, “You still miss Fairholme after all this time?”

She gave him a sad smile. “I know it’s gone for good. But I still dream about it. My mother was born there. Four generations of my family.”

“What happened to it?”

She looked down at her plate. “A tech billionaire bought it at a cut-rate price. I heard he changed everything, added zebra-print shag carpeting and neon lights, and turned the nursery into his own private disco. Of course that was his right. But he wouldn’t let me take a picture of my great-grandmother’s fresco before he destroyed it with his sandblaster.”

A low growl came from Darius’s throat. He remembered the nursery fresco, a charming monstrosity picturing a sad-eyed little goose girl leading ducks and geese through what looked like a Bavarian village. Not his cup of tea, but it was part of the house’s history. “I’m sorry.”

She looked up with a bright, fake smile. “It’s fine. Of course it couldn’t last. Good things never do.”

“Neither do bad things,” he said quietly. “Nothing lasts, good or bad.”

“I guess you’re right.” She wrapped her arms around her pregnant belly. “But I don’t want a big society wedding, Darius. I think I’d just like you and me, and our closest family and friends. I don’t need ten bridesmaids. I just want one.”

“An old friend?”

She smiled. “A new one. Belle Langtry. A waitress at the diner. How about you? Who would you choose as your best man?”

“Ángel Velazquez.”

“Ángel?”

“It’s a nickname. His real first name is Santiago, but he hates it, because he was named after a man who refused to recognize him as his son.”

“How awful!”

Darius shrugged. “I call him by his last name. Velazquez hates weddings. He recently had to be the best man for a friend of ours, Kassius Black. He complained for months. All that tender love gave him a headache, he said.”

Letty was looking at him in dismay. “And you want him at our wedding?”

“He needs a little torture. When you meet him you’ll see what I mean. Completely arrogant, always sure he’s right.”

“Hard to imagine,” she said drily.

“So Velazquez. And my extended family.”

Her eyes brightened. “Your family?”

“My great-aunt, Theia Ioanna, who lives in Athens. Assorted uncles, aunts and cousins, and the rest of my village on Heraklios, the island I’m from.”

“Could we bring them all over from Greece? And of course we’ll have my father…”

Darius stiffened. “No.”

“No?” She frowned. “We could get married on Heraklios, if they can’t travel. I’ve always wanted to visit the Greek islands…”

“I mean your father. He’s not invited.”

“Of course he’s invited. He’s my father. He’ll walk me down the aisle. I know you don’t like him, but he’s my only family.”

“Letty, I thought you understood.” His jaw was taut, his voice low and cold. “I don’t want you, or our baby, within ten feet of that man ever again.”

“What?”

“It’s not negotiable.” Swiveling to face her at the counter, Darius gripped her shoulder. “I will pay back everything he stole. But this is the price.” His dark eyes narrowed. “You will cut your father completely and permanently out of our lives.”

She drew back. “But he’s my father. I love him—”

“He lost the right to your loyalty long ago. Do you think I want a con artist, a thief, around my wife…my child…my home?” He looked at her in tightly controlled fury. “No.”

“He never meant to hurt anyone,” she tried. “He always hoped the stock market would turn and he’d be able to pay everyone back. He just lost his way after my mom died. And he hasn’t been well since he got out of prison. If you just knew what he’s been through…”

“Excuses on top of excuses! You expect me to feel sympathy?” he said incredulously. “Because he was sick? Because he lost his wife? Because of him, you and I were separated. Because of him, my own father never had the chance to grow old! After he’d worked for him with utter devotion for almost twenty-five years. And that’s how your father repaid him!”

“Darius, please.”

“You expect me to allow that man to walk you down the aisle? To hold my firstborn child in his arms? No.” He set his jaw. “He’s a monster. He has no conscience, no soul.”

“You don’t know him like I do…”

Remembering her weakness where her father was concerned, her senseless loyalty at any cost, Darius abruptly changed tack. “If you truly love him, you will do as I ask. It will benefit him, as well.”

“How can you say that?”

“Once I’ve paid all his debts, he’ll never need to be afraid of someone breaking his arm again. He’ll be treated better by his probation officers. By potential employers.”

“He can’t work. No one would hire him. He would starve in the street.”

Revulsion churned in Darius’s belly, but he forced himself to say, “I will make sure that does not happen. He can remain in your Brooklyn apartment and his rent will be paid. He will always have food and any other necessities he might require. But he must face the consequences of what he’s done. He’s taken enough from you, Letty. Your future is with me.”

Pushing away the breakfast plates, he stood up from the kitchen counter and went to her handbag on the entryway table. Pulling out her phone, he held it out to her.

“Call him,” he said quietly. “See what he tells you to do.”

Sitting at the counter in her white robe, Letty stared at the phone with big, stricken eyes, as if it were poison. She snatched it up, and with an intake of breath, dialed and held it up to her ear.

“Hi, Dad.” She paused, then said unhappily, “Yes. I’m sorry. I don’t blame you for worrying. I should have… Ooh? You saw that?” She looked up and said to Darius, “Your announcement about repaying the five billion is already all over the news. Our engagement, too. Dad is thrilled.”

“Of course,” he said acidly.

“What?” She turned her focus back to her father. “Oh, yes,” she whispered, looking up at Darius with troubled eyes. “We’re very happy.” She bit her lip. “But, Dad, there’s this one thing. It’s a big thing. A big horrible thing—” her voice broke a little “—and I hardly know how to say it…” She took a deep breath. “I won’t be able to see you anymore. Or let you see the baby.”

Darius watched her face as she listened to her father’s response. Her expression was miserable.

He blocked all mercy from his soul. He was being cruel to be kind. Saving her from her own weak, loving heart.

“No,” she whispered into the phone. “I won’t abandon you. It’s not…”

She paused again, and her expression changed, became numb with grief. Finally, she choked out in a voice almost too soft to hear, “Okay, Dad. All right. I love you, too. So much. Goodbye.”

Tears were streaming down her face. Wiping them away, she handed Darius the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”

He stared down at the phone in dismay. He hadn’t expected that. He picked it up and put it to his ear.

“What do you want?” he said coldly.

“Darius Kyrillos.” He recognized Howard Spencer’s voice. Though the voice had aged and grown shaky, he could almost hear the older man’s smile. “I remember when you were a little boy, just come to Fairholme. You barely spoke English but even then, you were a great kid.”

Unwanted memories went through him of when he’d first come to Fairholme with a father who was a stranger to him, a lonely eleven-year-old boy, bereaved by his grandmother’s death. He’d felt bewildered by America and homesick for Greece. Back then Howard Spencer had seemed grand and as foreign as a king.

But he’d welcomed the bereft boy warmly. He’d even asked his five-year-old daughter to look after him. In spite of their six-year age difference, Letty, with her caring and friendly heart, had swiftly become his friend, sharing her toys and showing him the fields and beach. While her father had given Darius Christmas presents and told him firmly he could do anything he wanted in life.

In an indirect way, Howard Spencer had even helped start his software company. As a teenager, Darius had been fascinated by computers. He’d taught himself to tinker and code, and soon found himself responsible for every tech device, security feature and bit of wireless connectivity at Fairholme. It was Howard Spencer who’d hired him as the estate’s first technical specialist and allowed him to continue to live there. He’d even paid for Darius to study computer science at the local community college…

Darius felt a twist in his gut. Like…guilt? No. He rushed to justify his actions. All right, so Spencer had encouraged him and paid for his schooling. Using stolen money from his Ponzi scheme!

“Yes, a good kid,” Howard continued gruffly. “But stubborn, with all that stiff-necked Greek pride. Always had to do everything yourself. Letty was the only one you really let help you with anything. And even then, you always thought you had to be in charge. You never recognized her strength.”

“Your point?” Darius said coldly.

He heard the other man take a deep breath.

“Take good care of my daughter,” he said quietly. “Both Letty and my grandchild. I know you will. That’s the only reason I’m letting them go.”

The line abruptly cut off.

“What did he say?” Letty’s miserable face came into view.

“He said…” Darius stared down in amazement at the phone in his hand.

He ground his teeth. Damn the old man. Taking the high road. He must be playing the long game. Trusting that Letty would wear him down after their wedding and make him relent. Make him forgive.

But Darius would never forgive. He’d die before he let that man worm his way back into their lives.

“Tell me what he said,” Letty pleaded.

He turned to her with an ironic smile. “He gave our marriage his blessing.”

Her shoulders slumped.

“That’s what he said to me, too,” she whispered.

So his theory was correct. Clever bastard, he thought grudgingly. He really knew how to pull his daughter’s heartstrings.

But Howard Spencer had finally met someone he couldn’t manipulate. The old man would end his days alone, in that tiny run-down apartment, with no one to love him. Just as he deserved.

While they—they would live happily ever after.

Darius looked at Letty tenderly.

After their marriage, after she was legally his forever, she would come to despise her father as Darius did. At the very least, she would forget and let him go.

She would love only Darius, be loyal only to him.

He wouldn’t love her back, of course. The childish illusion that love could be anything but pain had been burned out of him permanently. But love was still magic to Letty, and he realized now it was the only way to bind her and make her happy in their marriage. For the sake of their children, he had to make her love him.

This was just the beginning.

“You did the right thing,” Darius murmured. Pulling her into his arms, he kissed the top of her head, relishing the feel of her body against his, the crush of her full breasts and her belly rounded with his child. “You’ll never regret it.”

“I regret it already.”

Leaning forward, he kissed the tears off her cheeks. He kissed her forehead, then her eyelids. He felt her shudder and pulled her fully into his arms. He whispered, “Let me comfort you.”

He lowered his mouth to hers, gripping her smaller body to his own, and kissed her passionately. A sigh came from her throat as she wrapped her arms around him. He opened the belt of her robe and ran his hands down her naked body. Then with a large sweep of his arm, he knocked all the dishes to the floor with a noisy clatter.

Lifting his future bride up onto the countertop, Darius did what he’d wanted to do for the last hour. He made love to her until she wept. Tears of joy, he told himself. Just tears of joy.

Letty had never been the sort of girl to dream about weddings. At least not since she was eighteen, when her one attempt at elopement had ended so badly.

But she’d vaguely thought, if she ever did get married, she’d have a simple wedding dress, a cake, a bouquet. And her father would give her away.

This wedding had none of that.

Two days after Darius’s proposal, they got married in what felt like the worst wedding ever.

Her own fault, Letty thought numbly, as she stood in front of a judge, mumbling vows to honor and cherish. She had no one to blame but herself.

Well, and Darius.

After her phone call with her father, Letty had been too heartsick to care about planning a wedding ceremony. Even Darius ruthlessly taking possession of her body on the kitchen counter hadn’t cheered her up. Her heart felt empty and sad.

Darius had tried to tempt her with outrageous ideas for a destination wedding. “If you don’t want a big society wedding, there’s no reason to wait. The sky’s the limit! Do you want a beach wedding in Hawaii? A winter wedding in South America? If you want, I’ll rent out the Sydney Opera House. Just say the word!”

She’d looked at him miserably. “What I want is for my father to be there. Without love, what difference does the wedding make?”

The temperature in the room had dropped thirty degrees. “Fine,” he said coldly. “If that’s how you feel, we might as well just get married at City Hall.”

“Fine,” she’d said in the same tone.

So they’d gone to the Office of the City Clerk near Chinatown this afternoon, where they’d now been killing time for three hours, surrounded by happy couples all waiting for their turn.

Letty felt exhausted to the bone. She hadn’t slept at all the night before. Neither she nor Darius had even bothered to dress up for the ceremony. She wore a simple blouse and maternity pants. Darius wore a dark shirt, dark jeans and a dark glower.

Nor had it helped that the two friends they’d brought to be their witnesses had hated each other on sight. The constant childish bickering between Belle Langtry and Santiago Velazquez, who’d introduced himself as Ángel, had been the final nail in the coffin of Worst Wedding Ever.

It could have been so different, Letty thought sadly. If her father had been there, if she and Darius had been in love, nothing else would have mattered.

But there was no love anywhere on this wedding day.

As she and Darius had sat waiting, listening to their best man and maid of honor squabble, she couldn’t stop tears from falling. Darius’s glower only made them fall faster.

Their number was the very last to be called in the late afternoon. The four of them had gone up to the desk. As the officiant swiftly and matter-of-factly spoke the words that would bind her to Darius forever, Letty couldn’t stop thinking about how she was betraying her father. The man who’d taught her to roller-skate down Fairholme’s long marble hallways, who’d taught her chess on rainy days. The man who’d told her again and again how much he loved her.

“I screwed everything up,” Howard had told her sadly when he got out of prison. “But I swear I’ll make it up to you, Letty. I’ll get you back the life you lost…”

He’d never once criticized her for getting pregnant out of wedlock. He’d just been delighted about a future grandchild. Even when she’d phoned him before the wedding, and told him she was marrying Darius, she’d felt his joy. Though it had been abruptly cut off when she’d tearfully told him the rest of the deal.

Then he’d said quietly, “Do it, sweetheart. Marry him. It’s what you’ve always wanted. Knowing you’re happy, I’ll be at peace.”

Now, as she watched Darius speak his marriage vows, Letty’s heart twisted. She blinked as she heard the officiant solemnly finish, “…I now pronounce you man and wife.”

The whole ceremony had taken three minutes.

She dimly heard Belle clapping and hooting wildly as Darius leaned forward to kiss her. Some instinct made her turn away and offer him only her cheek.

His glower turned radioactive.

After signing the marriage certificate, their small party of four trundled out of the City Clerk’s Office to discover the cold gray September skies pouring rain.

“Such a beautiful ceremony. I’m so happy for you,” Belle sighed, obviously caught up in some romantic image that had nothing to do with reality. “You make a perfect couple.”

“You’re living in a fairy tale,” Santiago Velazquez muttered. “They can obviously barely stand each other.”

Belle whirled on him irritably. “Just once, could you keep your bad attitude to yourself?” Her voice was shrill. “I’m sick of hearing it!”

He shrugged, glancing at Darius. “You got married because she’s pregnant, right?”

“Velazquez, don’t make me punch you on my wedding day.”

“See?” Belle crowed. “Even Darius can’t stand you.”

The Spaniard looked superior. “Just because I’m the only one who is willing to speak the truth…”

“The truth is that marriage is about love and commitment and a whole bunch of sophisticated emotions you obviously can’t handle. So keep your opinions to yourself. You might think you’re being all deep, but talking like that at a wedding is just plain tacky!”

The Spaniard’s eyes narrowed and for a moment Letty was afraid that the constant bickering between them was about to boil over into something truly unpleasant. But to her relief, the man abruptly gave a stiff nod.

“You are right.”

Belle stared at him wide-eyed, then tossed her hair, huffing with a flare of her nostrils. “Course I’m right. I’m always right.”

Letty exhaled as they seemed to drop the matter.

“Except for when you’re wrong,” came his sardonic response, “which is every other time but now, since you’re obviously living in some ridiculous romantic dream world.”

Belle glared at him, then whirled on Letty with a beaming smile. “Are you having a good wedding day, sweetie? Because that’s what I care about. Because I’m not rude like some people. We learn manners in Texas.”

“I have a ranch in Texas,” the Spaniard rejoined. “And I learned an expression that I believe applies to you, Miss Langtry.”

“The meek shall inherit the earth?”

He gave her a sensual half smile. “All hat, no cattle.”

Belle gave an outraged intake of breath. Then she said sweetly, “That’s a lot of big talk for a man with a girl’s name.”

He looked irritated. “You’re saying it wrong. An-hel. And it is a man’s name. In every Spanish-speaking country…”

“Aaain-jel, Aaain-jel!” she taunted, using the pronunciation that involved harps and wings. She blinked. “Oh, look, the limo’s here.”

Letty almost cried in relief.

“Finally,” Darius muttered. The limo had barely slowed down at the curb before he opened the back door for his bride. Letty jumped in, eager to escape.

“Where are we going?” Belle said, starting to follow, the Spaniard coming up behind her. Darius blocked them from the limo.

“Thank you so much. Both of you. But I’m afraid Letty and I must leave immediately for Greece.”

Belle frowned. “I thought you weren’t leaving until tomorrow. We were going to take you out for dinner…”

“Unfortunately, we must get on the plane immediately. My family is waiting to meet my new bride.”

“Oh,” Belle said, crestfallen. “In that case… Of course I understand.” Leaning into the back of the limo, she hugged Letty. “Have a wonderful honeymoon! You deserve every bit of your happiness!”

Belle was right, Letty reflected numbly as the limo pulled away from her friend still beaming and waving on the sidewalk. She’d get all the happiness she deserved after abandoning her father to marry Darius: none.

Letty stared out at the gray rain. Darius sat beside her silently for the hour and a half it took to drive through the evening rush-hour traffic to the small airport outside the city. As they boarded his private jet, he continued to ignore her.

Fine. Letty didn’t care. She felt exhausted and miserable. Walking to the separate bedroom in the back of the jet, she shut the door behind her. Climbing into bed, she pulled the blanket up to her forehead, struggling to hold back tears. She closed her eyes.

And woke up in a different world.

Letty sat up with an intake of breath.

She was no longer on the jet. She found herself in a big, bright bedroom, empty except for a king-size wrought-iron bed.

Brilliant sunlight came through the open windows, leaving warm patterns against the white walls and red tiled floor. She heard laughter outside and conversation in an exotic language and the sweet singing of birds.

She looked down at the soft blanket and cotton sheets. Where was she? And—her lips parted in a gasp. She was wearing only her bra and panties! Someone had undressed her while she was asleep! The thought horrified her.

How had she gotten into this bed?

The flight across the Atlantic had been lonely and dark. She remembered crying herself to sleep on the plane. After her sleepless night before their wedding, she’d slept deeply.

She dimly remembered Darius carrying her, the warmth of his chest, the comforting rumble of his voice.

“So you’re awake.”

Looking up with an intake of breath, Letty saw her husband now standing in the open doorway, dressed more casually than she’d ever seen him, in a snug black T-shirt and long cargo shorts. Sunlight lit him from behind, leaving his expression in shadow.

“Where are we?”

“The island of Heraklios. My villa.”

“I barely remember arriving.”

“You were exhausted. Overwhelmed from the happiness of marrying me,” he said sardonically.

“What time is it?”

“Here? Almost two in the afternoon.” He motioned to a nearby door. “There’s an en suite bathroom if you’d like a shower.” He indicated a large walk-in closet. “Your clothes have already been unpacked.”

“Are you the one who took off my clothes?”

“Just so you’d sleep more comfortably.”

She bit her lip as she looked down at the bed. “Um. And did you…did we…uh, share this bed?”

His shoulders tensed. “If you’re asking if I took advantage of you in your sleep, the answer is no.”

She took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean…”

“Get dressed and come out on the terrace when you’re ready. My family is here to meet you.”

Letty stared at the empty doorway in dismay, then slowly rose out of bed. Her body felt stiff from sleeping so long.

Going into the elegant marble bathroom, she took a hot shower, which refreshed her. Wrapping herself in a towel, she wiped the steam off the mirror. Her face looked pale and sad.

A fine thing, she thought. When she was about to meet his family. They’d take one look at Letty’s face and assume, as Santiago Velazquez had, that she and Darius had gotten married only because of her pregnancy. Why else would someone as handsome and powerful as Darius Kyrillos ever choose a penniless, ordinary-looking woman like her?

He was taking a risk even bringing her to meet them. She could embarrass him, treat them disrespectfully. She could even explain how he’d blackmailed her into marriage.

Letty looked at her eyes in the mirror. She didn’t want to hurt Darius. She just wanted him to forgive her dad.

Maybe she could start by treating his family with the same respect she wanted for her father.

Letty dressed quickly and carefully, blow-drying her long dark hair and brushing it till it shone. She put on lipstick, and chose a pretty new sundress and sandals from the closet. Her knees shook as she went down the hallway. A maid directed her toward the terrace.

With a deep breath, she went outside into the sunshine.

Bright pink bougainvillea climbed the whitewashed walls of the Greek villa, above a wide terrace overlooking the mountainous slopes of the island jutting out of the Ionian Sea.

Against the blue horizon, she saw the shaded forest green of a distant island. The whole world seemed bright with color: blue and white buildings, sea and sky, pink flowers, brown earth and green olive, fig and pomegranate trees.

She felt the warm sun against her skin, and pleasure seeped through her body. Then she saw the group of people sitting at a long wooden table.

Darius rose abruptly from the table. Silence fell as the others followed his gaze.

Wordlessly, he came over to her. His dark eyes glowed as he lowered his head to kiss her cheek. Turning back to the others, he said in English, “This is Letty. My wife.”

An elderly woman got up from the table. Standing on her tiptoes, she squinted, carefully looking Letty over from her blushing face to her pregnant belly. Then she smiled. Reaching up, she patted Letty on the cheek and said something in Greek that she didn’t understand.

“My great-aunt says you look happy now,” Darius translated. “Like a beautiful bride.”

“How sweet… Did she see me before?” Letty asked.

“When I brought you in. She said you looked like death warmed over.”

She stared at him in horror, then narrowed her eyes accusingly. “She never said that.”

He gave a sudden grin. “She says our island has obviously revived you, all our sun and sea air. Plus, clearly—” he quirked a dark eyebrow “—marriage to me.”

The elderly woman said something quickly behind him. He glanced back with an indulgent smile. “Nai, Theia Ioanna.”

“What did she say?”

Darius turned back to Letty. “She said marriage to you seems to agree with me, as well.” Looking down at her, he hesitated. “Our wedding was…”

“Horrible.”

“Not good,” he agreed. His dark eyes caressed her face, and he leaned forward to whisper, “But something tells me our honeymoon will make up for it.”

Letty felt his breath against her hair, the brush of his lips against her earlobe, and electricity pulsed through her at the untold delights promised by a honeymoon in the Greek villa. In that enormous bed.

She tried not to think about that as he introduced her to the other people around the table, aunts and uncles and innumerable cousins. She smiled shyly, wishing she could speak Greek as one Kyrillos family member after another hugged her, their faces alight with welcome and approval.

One of the younger women grabbed her arm, motioning for her to take the best seat at the table. On learning she was hungry, other relatives dished her out a lunch from the tempting dishes on the table. Tangy olives, salad with cucumbers, tomatoes and feta, vine leaves stuffed with rice, grilled meats on skewers, fresh seafood and finally the lightest, flakiest honey pastries imaginable. After sleeping so long, and having no appetite yesterday, Letty was ravenous and gobbled it all up as fast as she could get it.

The women around her exclaimed approvingly in Greek. Darius sat beside her, smiling, his dark eyes glowing beneath the warm Greek sun.

“They like how you eat,” he told her.

She laughed in spite of herself. In this moment, beneath the pink flowers and warm Greek sun, with the blue sea beyond, she felt suddenly, strangely happy. Finally, she pushed her chair away from the table, shaking her head as his relatives offered yet more plates. “No, thank you.” She turned anxiously to Darius. “How do I say that?”

“Óchi, efharisto.”

“Óchi, efharisto,” she repeated to them warmly.

One by one, his family members hugged her, speaking rapidly, patting her belly, then hugging Darius before they hurried into the villa.

“Your family is wonderful.”

“Thank you.” He lifted a dark eyebrow. “By the way, some of them speak English quite well. They’re just hoping if you don’t realize that, you’ll be inspired to learn Greek.”

She laughed, then looked around the terrace at the flowers and sea view. “I’m feeling very inspired, believe me.”

“They already love you. Because you’re my wife.” He put his arm along the back of her chair. “Not only that, you’re the first woman I’ve ever brought home to meet them.”

Her eyes went wide. “Really?”

He grinned, shaking his head. “For years, they read about my scandalous love life and despaired of me ever settling down with a nice girl.” He sipped strong black coffee from a tiny cup. “Great-aunt Ioanna is delirious with joy to see me not only sensibly married, but also expecting a child. And she remembers you.”

Letty’s smile fell. “She does?”

“Yes.”

“Does she blame me for—?”

“No,” he cut her off. “She remembers you only as the girl that I loved and lost long ago. In her mind, that means our marriage is fate. Moíra. She believes our love was meant to stand the test of time.”

Letty blinked fast. Our love was meant to stand the test of time.

Leaning forward, he took her hand. “You are part of the family. You are a Kyrillos now.”

It was true, she realized. She had a new last name. When she updated her passport, she’d no longer be Letitia Spencer, the daughter of the famous white-collar criminal, but Letitia Kyrillos, the wife of a self-made billionaire. Just by marrying, she’d become an entirely different person. What a strange thought.

But maybe this new woman, Letitia Kyrillos, would know how to be happy. Maybe their marriage, which had been so bleak at the start, could someday be full of joy, as her own parents’ marriage had been.

She just had to change Darius’s mind about her father. It wouldn’t be hard.

Like making it snow in July.

One of Darius’s female cousins came back out of the villa and pulled on his arm, talking rapidly in Greek, even as she smiled apologetically at Letty.

“They need to move the big table,” he explained. “To get the terrace ready for the party tonight.”

“What party?”

“They wouldn’t let us come all this way without making a big fuss.” He grinned. “There’s a party tonight to welcome you as my bride. Only family and friends from the village have been invited…”

“Good,” she said, relieved.

“Which, naturally, means the entire island will be here, and a few people from neighboring islands, as well.”

Her heart sank to her sandals at the thought of all those people judging her, possibly finding her unworthy of being Darius’s bride. She whispered, “What if they don’t like me?”

Reaching out, Darius lifted her chin. “Of course they will,” he said softly. “They will because I do.”

As the hot Greek sun caressed her skin in the flower-dappled terrace, the dark promise in his gaze made her shiver.

As his relatives bustled back out on the terrace, with maids following them, they started clearing dishes, wiping the table and sweeping the terrace.

Letty looked around anxiously. “Ask them how I can help.”

He snorted. “If you think they’ll allow either of us to lift a finger, you’re out of your mind.”

“We can’t just sit here, while they do all the work!”

“Watch this.” Pushing his chair back, Darius rose from the table and said casually in English, “Hey, Athina, hand me that broom.”

“Forget it, Darius,” his cousin replied indignantly in the same language, yanking the broom out of his reach. “You sent my sons to college!”

“You gave me a job when I needed work,” a man added in heavily accented English, as he lifted fairy lights to dangle from the terrace’s leafy trellis. “We’re doing this. Don’t think you’re getting out of it!”

They all gave a low buzz of agreement.

Looking at Letty, Darius shrugged. She sighed, seeing she was outmatched. His great-aunt was now, in fact, shooing them away with a stream of steady Greek, a mischievous smile on her kindly, wizened face.

Letty drew closer to him. “So what should we do with ourselves?”

Darius’s eyes darkened as he said huskily, “We are on our honeymoon…”

She shivered at his closeness and at the tempting thought of going back to the bedroom. But she was distracted by the sweep of the brooms and the loud cries of the relatives and house staff bustling back and forth across the villa as they cleaned and set up for the party, all the while watching Darius and Letty out of the corners of their eyes with frank interest and indulgent smiles.

“I couldn’t,” Letty whispered, blushing beneath all the stares. “If we stay, I’ll feel like we should help cook and clean.”

“Then let’s not stay.” He took her hand. “Let me show you the island.”

He drew her out of the enormous, luxurious villa, past the gate and out onto unpaved road. Looking around, she saw the rural rolling hills were covered with olive and pomegranate trees, dotted with small whitewashed houses beneath the sun. But there was one thing she didn’t see.

“Where are all the cars? The paved roads?”

“We don’t have cars. Heraklios is too small and mountainous, and there are only a few hundred residents. There are a few cobblestoned streets by the waterfront, but they’re too winding and tight for any car.”

“So how do you get around?”

“Donkey.”

She almost tripped on her own feet. She looked at him incredulously. “You’re joking.”

He grinned. “I managed to put in a helicopter pad, and also a landing strip, at great expense, and it isn’t even usable if the wind is too strong. Here we transport most things by sea.” As they walked closer to an actual village clinging to a rocky cliff, he pointed to a small building on a hill. “That was my school.”

“It looks like one room.”

“It is. After primary school, kids have to take a ferry to a bigger school the next island over.” As they continued walking, he pointed to a small taverna. “That’s where I tasted my first sip of retsina.” His nose wrinkled. “I spit it out. I still don’t like it.”

“And you call yourself a Greek,” she teased. His eyebrow quirked at her challenge.

“I’d take you in and let you taste it, except—” he looked more closely at the closed door “—it looks like old Mr. Papadakis is already up at the villa. Probably setting up drinks.”

“The whole town’s closing—just for our wedding reception?”

“It’s a small island. I don’t think you realize how much pull I have around here.”

Letty slowed when she saw a ruined, lonely-looking villa at the top of the hill, above the village. “What’s that?”

His lips tightened, curled up at the edges. “That was my mother’s house.”

“Oh,” she breathed. She knew his mother had abandoned him at birth. He’d never talked much about her, not even when they were young. “No one lives there anymore?”

“My mother left the island right after I was born, her parents soon after. It seems they couldn’t stand the shame of my existence,” he added lightly.

She flinched, her heart aching. “Oh, Darius.”

“My mother moved to Paris. She died in a car crash when I was around four.” He shrugged. “I heard her parents died a few years ago. I can’t remember where or how.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Why? I didn’t love them. I don’t mourn them.”

“But your mother. Your grandparents…”

“Calla Halkias died in a limousine, married to an aristocrat.” His voice was cold as he looked back to the ghostly ruin on the hill. “Just as I’m sure she would have wanted. The prestigious life her parents expected for her.”

A lump rose in her throat as she thought of Darius as a child on this island, looking up at the imposing villa of the people who’d tossed him out like garbage. She didn’t know what to say, so she held his hand tightly. “Did you ever forgive them?”

“For what?”

“They were your family, and they abandoned you.”

His lips pressed down. “My mother gave birth to me. I’m glad about that. But I wouldn’t call them family. From everything I’ve heard, they were a total disaster. Like…” He hesitated. But she knew.

“Like my family?” she said quietly.

He paused. “Your mother was a great lady. She was always kind. To everyone.”

“Yes,” she said over the lump in her throat.

“My yiayiá raised me. Our house didn’t have electricity or plumbing, but I always knew she loved me. When I finally made my fortune, I had the old shack razed and built a villa in its place. The biggest villa this island has ever seen.” Looking up at the ruin, he gave a grim smile. “When I was young, the Halkias family was the most powerful here. Now I am.”

She noticed he’d never said if he forgave them. She bit her lip. “But, Darius…”

“It’s in the past. I want to live in the present. And shape the future.” Taking both her hands in his own, Darius looked down at her seriously on the dusty road beneath the hot Greek sun. “Promise me, Letty. You’ll always do what’s best for our family.”

“I promise,” she said, meaning it with all her heart.

Lowering his head, he whispered, “And I promise the same.”

He softly kissed her, as if sealing the vow. Drawing back, he searched her gaze. Then he pulled her back into his arms and kissed her in another way entirely.

Feeling the heat of his lips against hers, the rough scrape of the bristles on his chin, she clung to him, lost in her own desire. He was her husband now. Her husband.

He finally pulled away. “Come with me.”

He led her to the end of the dusty road, through the winding cobblestones of the small village of whitewashed houses. On the other side, they went through a scrub brush thicket of olive trees. She held his hand tightly as the branches scraped her arms, and they went down a sharp rocky hill. Then suddenly, they were in a hidden cove on a deserted white sand beach.

Letty’s eyes went wide in amazement. The popular beaches of the Hamptons and even around Fairholme would have been packed on a gloriously warm September day. But this beach was empty. “Where is everyone?”

“I told you. They’re at the villa, getting ready for the party.”

“But—” she gestured helplessly “—there must be tourists, at least?”

He shook his head. “We don’t have a hotel. The tourists are at the resorts up in Corfu. So we all know each other here. Everyone is a friend or relative, or at least a friend of a relative. It’s a community. One big family.”

No wonder this island felt like a world out of time. She felt her heart twist. Turning away, she looked around at the hidden cove with the white sand beach against the blue Ionian Sea and tried to smile. “It’s wonderful.”

“You’re missing Fairholme,” he said quietly.

She looked down at the white sand. “It’s been ten years. It’s stupid. Any psychiatrist would tell me it’s time to let it go.”

“I miss it, too.” He grinned. “Do you remember the beach at Fairholme? Nothing but rocks.”

“Yes, and the flower meadow where you taught me to dance.”

“What about the pond where I tried to catch frogs and you always wanted to give them names and take them home—?”

Suddenly their words were tumbling over each other.

“The brilliant color of the trees in autumn—”

“Roller-skating down the hallways—”

“The secret passageway behind the library where you’d always hide when you were upset—”

“Your mother’s rose garden,” Darius said with a sudden laugh, “where she caught me that time I tried a cigarette. My first and last time—”

“And how Mrs. Pollifax scolded us whenever we tracked mud into her freshly cleaned kitchen.” Letty grinned. “But she always gave us milk and cookies after we’d made it right. Though it took a while. You weren’t very good at mopping.”

“We always turned it into a game.”

The two of them smiled at each other on the deserted beach.

Letty’s smile slipped away. “But we’ll never see Fairholme again.”

Darius stared at her for a long moment, then abruptly started taking off his shoes. “The sea should be warm.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting in.” He leaned over to unbuckle her sandals. “And you’re coming with me.”

Barefoot, they went splashing out into the sea. Letty delighted in the feel of the water caressing her feet, then her calves and finally knees. She was tempted to go deeper into the water, to float her pregnant body in the seductive waves that would make her feel light as air. She took a few more steps, until the sea lapped the hem of her white sundress.

Splashing behind her, Darius suddenly pulled her into his arms.

As the waves swirled around them, he kissed her, and there was no one to see but the birds soaring across the sky. For hours, or maybe just minutes, they kissed in the hidden cove, between the bright blue sea and sky, beneath the hot Greek sun. He ran his hands over her bare shoulders, over her thin cotton sundress, as the salty sea spray clung to their skin and hair.

Waves swirled around them, sucking the sand beneath their toes, as the tide started to come in. The waves crashed higher, moving up against their thighs.

Finally pulling away, Darius looked down at her intently. She felt his dark gaze sear her body. Sear her heart.

“Letty, the house we grew up in might be gone,” he whispered. “But we still have each other.”

The lowering afternoon sun shone around the edges of his dark hair, making Darius shimmer like the dream he was to her.

And it was then Letty knew the worst had happened. The doom and disaster. And it had happened more swiftly than she’d ever expected.

She loved him.

All of him.

The man he’d been.

The man he was.

The man he could be.

Since the February night they’d conceived their child, Letty had tried to convince herself that he’d changed irrevocably. That she hated him. That he’d lost her love forever.

It had all been a lie.

Even in her greatest pain, she’d never stopped loving him. How could she? He was the love of her life.

Glancing back at the lowering sun, Darius sighed. “Can’t be late for our own party. We’d better get back to the villa.” He glanced down at his shorts, now splattered with sand and seawater. “We might have to clean up a little.”

“Yes,” she said in a small voice.

“We’ll finish this later,” he said huskily, kissing her bare shoulder. He whispered, “I can hardly wait to make love to you, Mrs. Kyrillos.”

As they splashed their way to the beach, and made their way up the shore, Letty stumbled.

He caught her, then frowned, looking at her closely. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“No,” she said, hiding the ache in her throat, struggling to hold back tears. It wasn’t totally a lie. She wasn’t hurt.

But she knew she soon would be.

One day married, and her heart was already lost.

CHAPTER NINE

DARIUS NEARLY GASPED when he first saw Letty at the party that night. When she came out onto the terrace, she looked so beautiful she seemed to float through the twilight.

She wore a simple white maxi dress, which fit perfectly over her full breasts and baby bump. The soft fabric showed off the creamy blush of her skin and bright hazel of her eyes. Bright pink flowers hung in her long dark hair.

As the red sun was setting into the sea below the cliffs, three hundred people on the terrace burst into spontaneous applause amid a cacophony of approving Greek.

Darius’s heart was in his throat as he looked at her. He was dazzled. He thought she’d put Aphrodite, freshly risen from the sea, completely to shame.

And the fact that he’d even have such a ridiculously poetic thought stunned him.

As she came closer, he cleared his throat awkwardly. “You look nice.”

“Thank you,” she said, smiling shyly.

He did not touch her. He was almost afraid to. She was simply too desirable, and after their hours of kissing on the beach, he did not know how much more temptation his self-control could take. They’d been married for over twenty-four hours, but had not yet made love.

The party was torture. It lasted for hours, testing his resolve. If it had been any other situation, he would have told everyone to go to hell and taken his bride straight to bed.

But this was his family. His village. He couldn’t be rude to them or reject the warm welcome they gave his bride.

His whole body ached to possess her. He could think of nothing else. It was causing him physical pain. He was just glad he was wearing a long, loosely tailored jacket and loose trousers so the whole village could not discuss with amused approval his obvious desire for his bride.

The party was over the top, as only village affairs could be, with music, drinking and dancing. A feast had been lovingly prepared by his family and all the rest of the village. So many people rushed to Letty and started talking excitedly in Greek that she’d announced she planned to start taking Greek lessons as soon as possible. Some of his cousins immediately started cheering, and when Darius translated her words for his elderly great-aunt, Theia Ioanna actually stood on tiptoe to kiss Letty on both cheeks. His family loved her.

Of course they did. Letty Kyrillos was the perfect bride. She would be the perfect wife and mother. Now he’d gotten her away from her father, there would be no bad influences in her life.

Darius would be the only one to claim her loyalty. And the expression in Letty’s eyes as she looked at him now—a mix of longing, hero worship and fear—did strange things to his insides. It made him feel oddly vulnerable, reminding him of the insecure, lovesick youth he’d once been for her.

No. He just desired her, he told himself firmly. He was appreciative that she was comporting herself as a proper Greek wife, with kindness and respect to his family. And he hoped—expected—that she would soon love him. It would make all their lives easier.

Darius did not intend to love her in return. He would never leave himself that vulnerable again. As the protector of their family, as a husband, as a father, as a man, it was his duty to be strong.

Letty’s heart was her weakness. It would not be his.

His great-aunt went to bed at midnight, and the rest of the older generation soon after, but with the ouzo flowing and loud music and enthusiastic dancing, his cousins and many of the younger villagers remained well into the wee hours. It wasn’t until the ouzo was gone and the musicians were falling asleep over their instruments that the last guests finally took the hint and departed, after many congratulations and kisses for the newly married couple.

Darius and Letty were finally alone on the terrace, surrounded by streamers and empty champagne glasses.

She looked at him, her eyes huge in the moonlight, the pink flowers wilting in her dark lustrous hair.

Without a word, he took her hand.

Leading her to their bedroom suite at the farthest end of the south wing, he closed the door behind them and opened the windows and sliding glass door to the balcony. The wind blew from the sea, twisting the translucent white curtains, illuminated by moonlight.

Turning back to her, he lifted her long dark hair from the nape of her neck and slowly unzipped her dress. In the hush of the night, it felt like an act that was almost holy.

Her dress dropped to the floor. She turned to him, her eyes luminous in the silvery light. Reaching up, she pulled off his jacket. She unbuttoned his shirt. He felt the soft brush of her hands against his chest and caught them in his own. She looked up at him questioningly.

A strange feeling was building in his heart. Desire, he reminded himself fiercely. I desire her. He kissed her hands—first one, then the other.

The wind blew against her hair, causing pink flower petals to float softly to the floor like a benediction. Without a word, he pulled her to the enormous bed.

This time, as they made love, there were no words beyond the language of touch. There was only pleasure and delight.

He’d thought he’d known ecstasy the night they’d made love over and over in his Manhattan penthouse.

But this was something else. It felt different.

Why? Because they were married now, and she was permanently his? Because she knew him better than anyone on earth? Because she’d truly joined his family?

Whatever the reason, as he made love to her on this, their first true wedding night, it felt sacred.

It felt like…

Happiness.

After they’d both joined and shattered like a supernova in each other’s arms, Darius held her as she slept. As he stared at the ceiling, her words on the beach floated back into his mind.

We’ll never see Fairholme again.

Her voice had been quietly despairing. As if she’d accepted bleak loss as her due.

Darius scowled. He didn’t accept that.

He suddenly wanted to give Letty back everything she’d lost. And more.

Careful not to wake her, he rose from the bed in the gray light of dawn. Going out onto the balcony, with its view of the wild gray sea, he made a quiet phone call to his long-suffering executive assistant in New York. Mildred Harrison had worked for him for seven years, so she didn’t even sound surprised that he’d be rude enough to call her so late.

“Pity you left New York right when you’re the city’s hero,” she said drily. “Your picture is on the cover of the Daily Post. Apparently you’re some kind of Robin Hood figure now, robbing from your own fortune to pay back Howard Spencer’s victims.”

“Glad I’m not there, then. We’ll be back in two weeks, by which time I expect the papers will all be insulting me again. Anything else?”

“That Brooklyn apartment building has been purchased as you requested. Your father-in-law—”

“Never call him that again,” Darius said tersely.

She cleared her throat. “Um, Mr. Spencer has been advised that he will be allowed to remain in the apartment for as long as he wishes, free of charge.”

“Good,” he said, already bored with the subject.

She paused. “There’s something else you should know.”

“Well?”

“The investigator following him says Spencer has been visiting an oncologist. Apparently he’s sick. Maybe dying.”

Darius’s eyes widened. Then he gave a snort. “It’s a trick.”

“Mr. Green didn’t think so. He managed to get his hands on the medical records. It seems legit.”

“Spencer must have paid the doctor off.”

“Maybe.” Mildred sounded doubtful. “But if it were my father, I’d still want to know.”

Yes, Darius thought. He looked back at the shadowy form of Letty sleeping in his bed. She would want to know. But there was no way he was telling her. Not when the old man was probably just trying once again to cause trouble between them.

At worst, Spencer probably had a cold and thought he could use it to get out of his well-deserved punishment. Darius was not going to let it happen.

“I won’t have my wife bothered,” he said shortly. “Spencer must have known he was being followed.”

“As you say, Mr. Kyrillos.”

He set his jaw. “I called you for another reason. I want to buy my wife a wedding gift.”

“Beyond the billions you’re already putting in trust for her father’s victims? We’ve had a whole team of accountants coming through here, by the way, working with the Feds to determine accurate payments, including those for third-party clients. We’re not really staffed for this…”

“You’ll sort it out. And at the end, I’ll send you and your husband to Miami for a week of well-deserved rest.”

“Rome,” she said firmly. “For three.”

He grinned. Mildred knew what she was worth. He respected that.

“Three,” he agreed. “But I need you to do something first. I want to buy a home.”

“Your penthouse is too small?”

“I have a special place in mind. Find out what it would cost.”

He explained, and she gave a low whistle. “All right, boss. I’ll call you soon as I know. What’s your ceiling?”

“Whatever it takes.”

After he hung up the phone, Darius went back to the king-size bed he shared with his pregnant bride. Joining her under the blankets, he wrapped his arm around her as she slept. He heard the birds singing as, outside the window, the sun started to rise.

Holding Letty in his arms, he suddenly saw the reward for everything he’d done right in his life. He had Letty. He’d have the rest. Home. Children. Joy. All the things he’d stopped dreaming about long ago. He would have it all.

And nothing, especially not her criminal of a father, would come between them.

As their private jet began its descent through the clouds toward New York City, Letty felt a mixed sense of relief and regret.

She was glad to be returning closer to her father. Darius had assured her that Howard was fine and living rent-free in their old apartment with a stipend to supply his needs. “Your father is spending his days playing chess with friends down at the park,” he’d told her irritably. She could only assume Darius had someone watching him, but she didn’t even mind because she was glad to know he was all right. It felt so wrong never to see him, never to call him.

But at least now she’d know her dad was only a quick drive away, if needed. And soon she hoped he’d be back in their lives for good.

The heart attack that had caused the death of Darius’s father was a tragic accident. But surely he couldn’t hate her dad forever? She loved Darius too much to believe that. Soon they would all be a family again.

And family was all Letty cared about. As she’d promised her husband in Greece, she would always put her family above everything else.

She already felt wistful for the tiny Greek island where she’d been immediately accepted into Darius’s extended family. Their honeymoon had been the happiest two weeks of her life. She’d loved everything about Heraklios. The village. The beach. The vivid colors and bright sun. The villa. The people. Her eyes met Darius’s across the airplane cabin.

The man.

He was sitting in a white swivel chair and had spent much of the flight typing on his laptop, with some idea he’d had for a new business venture. But as his gaze caught hers, she felt every bit of his attention. She always felt it to her toes when he looked at her.

Lifting a dark eyebrow, he teased, “We could still turn the plane around.”

“I loved our visit,” she said wistfully, then glanced out the window. “But it’ll be nice to be back home.” She paused, biting her lip. She knew she shouldn’t ask, but she couldn’t help it. “Now we’re back in the city, maybe you could talk to my dad. Then you’d see his side…”

“Forget it,” he said flatly.

“He never meant to hurt anyone, he—”

Darius closed his laptop with a thud. “Stop.”

“Forgiveness frees the soul. You never know—” her voice sounded desperate even to her own ears “—you might have to ask someone for forgiveness one day!”

He snorted. “I don’t intend to commit any crimes, so I think I’m safe.”

“Darius—”

“No.”

Disappointment filled her heart. Clenching her hands, she told herself she’d just have to be patient. She forced herself to take a deep breath and change the subject. “I loved spending time with your family. Maybe your great-aunt could come visit us in New York.”

His expression relaxed and he smiled. “Theia Ioanna hates planes. She thinks of them as newfangled machines, a dangerous fad. She’s waiting for everyone to come to their senses. But after our baby’s born we could go back to Heraklios.”

“I’d like that.” Outside the window, the plane was descending through clouds that looked like white cotton candy. “In the meantime, I’m going to start learning Greek.” She looked at him coyly beneath her lashes. “You’d like to teach me your native tongue, wouldn’t you?”

His eyes darkened with interest. He started to rise from his seat, but as the plane broke beneath the clouds, the pilot announced over the intercom that they should buckle their seat belts for landing. Letty smiled.

Then she looked through the porthole window. “That’s not Teterboro.”

Now he was the one to smile. “No.”

Staring down, she suddenly recognized the airport. Long ago, her family had landed here every time they went on a trip. She looked up with a frown. “Long Island? Is there a problem?”

“Wait and see.”

After the plane landed at the small airport, the two of them came down the steps. A town car waited on the tarmac, and his driver and bodyguard swiftly loaded their suitcases from the plane.

“But why are we here?” she asked Darius helplessly in the backseat of the car a few minutes later as it pulled away from the airport.

“You’ll see.”

“You’re really vexing.”

His dark eyebrows lifted. “Vexing?” he teased, then moved closer as he whispered, “Is that what I am?”

Then he kissed her senseless in the backseat, until she was forced to agree rather unsteadily that he did have one or two good qualities, as well.

But she tensed when the limo turned onto the coastal road that she’d once known very, very well. Her suspicions were confirmed as they drove down the same country lane that she knew led to the massive 1920s beachfront estate that had once been her home. She turned on Darius angrily.

“Why would you bring us here?” she choked out. “Just to torture me? You can’t see the house from the road.” She felt a sudden ache in her throat as she looked out toward the gray-blue bay that led to the Atlantic. “The gate is guarded. That tech billionaire is serious about privacy. So if you’re hoping to get a peek of the house, it won’t happen.”

“You tried?”

“A month after it was sold at auction. As I told you, I just wanted a picture of my great-grandmother’s fresco. His guard did everything but set the dogs on me.”

“That won’t be a problem today.”

Letty pointed at the road ahead. “See? I told you—”

Then her eyes went wide.

The gate was wide open. Their limo drove right past the empty guardhouse, up the wide driveway to the glorious windswept oceanfront manor that had been built by Letty’s great-great-grandfather, a steel baron named Edwin Langford.

Fairholme.

Letty’s breath caught in her throat as she leaned out the car window, and her eyes were dazzled as she saw, for the first time in ten years, her beloved home.

Tears swelled in her eyes as she looked up at the gray stone mansion with its turrets and leaded glass windows soaring against the sky. Looking back at her husband, she breathed, “What have you done?”

He was smiling. “I’ve given you what you want most.”

The limo had barely stopped before she flung open her car door and raced eagerly into the house. Pushing aside the stately front door—unlocked!—she hurled herself into the foyer where she’d played as a child.

“Dad?” she cried out. “Dad, where are you?”

Letty ran from room to room, calling his name, overwhelmed with happiness that somehow, while pretending he was never going to forgive her father, Darius had seen the desperate desire of her heart.

I’ve given you what you want most.

“Dad!” she cried, moving from one elegant, empty room to the next. Memories followed her with every step.

There she had played pirates with her father.

There she had slipped down the marble floor in socks as the two of them competed to see who could slide farthest and make her mother laugh loudest.

There she’d played with the gardener’s kittens.

There she’d played hide-and-seek with Darius when they were kids…

There—every Saturday in summer—she’d tucked roses into the priceless Ming dynasty vase to make her mother smile.

But where was her dad? Where?

As Letty finished going through the main entrance rooms, she ran up the sweeping staircase toward the second floor. She stopped halfway up the stairs, realizing she was hearing only the echo of her own voice.

Her dad wasn’t there.

Letty’s shoulders sagged with savage disappointment. Turning back down the stairs, she saw Darius standing in the front doorway, watching her. The happy, smug expression had disappeared from his handsome face.

He said tightly, “Why do you think I would invite your father here?”

“You said—you said,” she faltered, biting her lip, “you were giving me what I wanted most.”

“This house.” His expression now could only be described as grimly outraged. “Your childhood home. I arranged to buy it for you. It wasn’t easy. I had to pay the man a fortune to leave before we arrived. But I wanted you to have all your dreams. Everything you’d lost.”

Everything she’d lost…

Gripping the banister for support, Letty sagged to sit on a stair. Heartbreaking grief was thundering through her, worse than if she’d never gotten her hopes up at all.

She struggled to hide it. She knew she was being churlish. Her mother would be ashamed of her. Here Darius had given her the stars and she was crying for the sun.

She should be overjoyed.

Fairholme.

Letty took a deep breath, looking up at the high painted ceilings, at the oak-paneled walls. Home. She was really here. Darius had given her back the home that had raised generations of Langfords, her mother’s family.

What an amazing gift.

Wiping her eyes, Letty looked at Darius and tried to smile.

His handsome face was mutinous.

She couldn’t blame him. He’d gone to a lot of trouble and expense to give her this incredible surprise, and she’d been completely ungrateful.

Rising unsteadily to her feet, she walked down the stairs to the foyer where he stood with a scowl, his arms folded.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “I love your wonderful gift.”

He looked distinctly grumpy. “It didn’t look like it.”

Feeling ashamed at her bad manners, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.

“I love it,” she said softly. “It’s a miracle to be here.”

Looking mollified, he accepted her embrace. “I’ve also hired Mrs. Pollifax to come back as our housekeeper.”

“You have!”

He smiled, clearly pleased by her reaction. “Along with as many of the original staff who were available. Giving them a big raise, naturally. I’ve also established a bank account in your name.”

“Whatever for?”

Darius gave her a sudden grin. “You obviously haven’t seen the stripper pole the last owner put up in the library. I knew you’d want to oversee the remodeling personally. Perhaps the fresco can be repaired? I’ve instructed the bank to give you unlimited funds. Use the money however you please.”

“For the house?”

“Yes.”

“The baby?”

“Of course. And you, Letty. Anything you want, jewelry, cars, furniture. You don’t have to ask me. Buy anything you desire.”

Biting her lip, she blurted out, “Could I send some money to my father?”

She knew immediately it was a mistake.

His expression turned icy. “I weary of your constantly bringing up this topic. We have an agreement.”

“I know, but—”

“Your father already has far more than he deserves.”

“If I could only just see him, so I could know he’s all right…”

“He’s fine.”

Letty searched his gaze, hoping for reassurance. “He’s fine? You know for sure?”

He paused. Then he finally said, “Yes.”

He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“I miss him,” she whispered. She took a deep breath, reminding herself of everything she had to be grateful for. Taking Darius’s hand, she pressed it to her cheek and looked up at him with gratitude. “But what you’ve done for me today, buying Fairholme back… I’ll never forget.”

For a long moment, the two of them stood together in the foyer, with sunlight pouring in through the open door. She breathed in scents she’d craved so long, the tangy salt of the ocean, the honeyed sweetness of her mother’s rose garden. The salt and sweetness of a lifetime of memories.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “For bringing me home.”

He cupped her cheek. “You’re worth it, Letty,” he said huskily. “For you, I would pay any price.”

Lowering his head, he kissed her, claiming her lips as he’d already claimed her body and soul. Words lifted unbidden to her throat. Words she hadn’t tried to say since that horrible night in February. Words straight from her heart.

“I love you, Darius,” she said softly.

He gave her an oddly shy smile. “You do?”

Smiling back through her tears, she nodded. Her blood was rushing through her ears, pounding through her veins, as she waited for what he’d say next.

Without a word, he kissed her.

As she stood in the Fairholme foyer, her heavily pregnant belly pressed between them as her husband kissed her so tenderly, miracles seemed to be spinning around her like a whirlwind.

They were married now. Expecting a baby. He’d paid off her father’s debts. He’d just brought her home. She loved him.

And someday, he would love her.

Letty was suddenly sure. They’d already had so many miracles. Why not more?

Darius would soon forgive her father and let him back into their family. He was too good a man not to forgive, especially when it meant so much to her. It was the only thing he hadn’t given her. That, and those three little words.

It was the same thing, she realized. When he forgave her father, that was how she would know that he truly loved her.

When he finally pulled away from their embrace, she looked up, still a little dazzled. “Is there really a stripper pole in the library?”

Darius gave a low laugh. “Come with me.”

Taking her hand, he drew her down the long marble hallway to the oak-paneled library. When she saw the gleaming stripper pole set in the brand-new white shag carpeting, she burst into horrified snorts of laughter.

“I told you,” he said.

“I’ll get it removed. Don’t worry. I’ll make this house just like it was,” Letty said. “Just like we remember.”

“All those memories.” He pulled her against his chest, his dark eyes intense as he whispered huskily, “But as I remember, there’s one thing we’ve never done in this house.”

And as her husband pulled her against him in a hot, fierce embrace, Letty knew all her deepest dreams were about to come true.

CHAPTER TEN

HOME. LETTY LOOKED around with satisfaction. Was there any sweeter word?

The remodel was finished just in time, too. The former owner’s monstrous decor had been removed—the shag carpeting, the stripper pole, the “ironic” brass fixtures and all the rest of it—and everything at Fairholme had been returned to its former glory.

The sitting room felt cozy, especially compared to the cold November weather outside. A fire crackled in the fireplace. Polished oak floors gleamed beneath priceless Turkish rugs. The sofas and chairs were plush and comfortable, the lamps sturdy and practical. Family photos now decorated the walls.

Letty snuggled back against the sofa. Her husband was sitting at the other end, tapping away on his laptop, but periodically he would rub her feet, so she made sure they were strategically available. Earlier, they’d had a delicious hearty meal of lamb stew and homemade bread, her favorite meal from childhood, prepared by Mrs. Pollifax.

The housekeeper had just left, saying that she needed to go visit a friend at a Brooklyn hospital. She’d had a strange expression when she said it, causing Letty to reply with a sympathetic murmur, “Please take all the time you need for your friend.”

“I just might,” the housekeeper had replied tartly, “since his own family can’t be bothered to go see him.”

“Poor man,” Letty had sighed, feeling sorry for him. She couldn’t imagine what kind of family wouldn’t visit a sick man in the hospital.

That reminded her of how much she missed her father after more than two months of not seeing him or talking to him. Darius still refused to forgive him. But surely, after their baby was born, his heart would be so full, he would have a new capacity to forgive? To love.

Letty looked at her husband hopefully. With the departure of Mrs. Pollifax, and the rest of the staff in their outlying cottages on the estate, the two of them were now completely alone in the house. The room felt snug and warm with her afghan blanket, the crackling fire and Darius’s closeness as outside the cold November wind blew, rattling the leaded glass windows.

She was getting close to her due date, and happier than she’d ever imagined.

The nursery was ready. She’d been overjoyed to discover that her great-grandmother’s precious fresco hadn’t been completely destroyed. A well-known art restorer had managed to bring a good portion of it back to life. The ducks and geese were far fewer in number, and the Bavarian village mostly gone, but the little goose girl no longer looked so sad. It was a joy to see it again, and though Darius pretended to mock it and roll his eyes as he called it “art,” she knew he was happy for her.

The nursery was the most beautiful room in the house, in Letty’s opinion, the place where she’d slept as a baby, as had her mother and her grandfather before. It was now freshly painted and decorated, with a crib and rocking chair and brand-new toys. All they needed was the baby.

“Soon,” she whispered aloud, rubbing her enormous belly. “Very soon.”

“Talking to the baby again?” Darius teased.

Holding up a tattered copy of a beloved children’s book, she responded archly, “I’m just going to read him this story.”

His dark eyebrows lifted. “Again?”

“The pregnancy book said…”

“Oh, have you read a pregnancy book?”

Letty’s lips quirked. Her constant consultation of pregnancy books and blogs was a running joke between them. But as a first-time mother and an only child, she had little experience with children and was anxious to do it right.

“It’s been scientifically proven,” she informed him now, “that a baby can hear, and therefore obviously listen to stories, from the womb.”

He rolled his eyes, then put his large hand tenderly on her belly. “Don’t worry, kid,” he said in a whisper. “I have something to read you that I know you’ll find way more interesting than the bunny story.”

“Oh, you do, do you?” she said, amused.

“Absolutely.” Turning back to his laptop, he clicked a few buttons and then started reading aloud, with mock seriousness, the latest business news from overseas.

Now she was the one to roll her eyes. But she found Darius’s low, deep voice soothing, even when he was describing boring tech developments. Sipping orange spice herbal tea, she nibbled on the sugar cookies she’d made earlier that afternoon. She’d been eating so much lately she felt nearly as big as a house herself.

But Darius didn’t seem to mind. Her cheeks grew hot as she recalled how he’d made love to her all over the house. Even the bathrooms—those with showers, at least. Almost forty rooms.

“We have to make this house ours,” he’d growled, and she’d loved it.

Now as she felt his gentle hand resting on her belly, she grew drowsy listening to his low voice reading news stories to their baby and punctuating them with exclamations when he felt the baby kick.

“Letty,” Darius said in a low voice, “are you awake?”

“Barely.” She yawned. “I was just going to head up to bed. Why?”

He was quiet for a long moment, then said quietly, “Never mind. It’ll wait. Good night, agape mou.”

The next morning, she kissed Darius goodbye as he left for lower Manhattan, as was his usual schedule Monday through Thursday. He’d set up an office for a new business he was excited about, to create software that would teach math and coding skills. Each day, Darius hired more employees, paying for their salaries out of his own pocket. There hadn’t been any profits. “And there might never be any,” he’d confessed sheepishly. But he wanted to make a difference in the world.

She’d never been so proud of him. He had a new spark in his eyes as he left Fairholme for his ninety-minute commute to the office.

Letty went up to the nursery, her favorite room, to fold all the cute tiny baby clothes one more time and make sure everything was ready. She’d had a dull ache in her lower back all morning. She went down to the kitchen, intending to ask Mrs. Pollifax if she knew of any natural remedy for back pain.

Instead she found the housekeeper crying.

“What’s wrong?” Letty cried, going up to her in the enormous, gleaming kitchen. “What’s happened?”

“My friend.” The woman wiped her eyes with the edge of her apron. “He’s dying.”

“I’m so sorry,” Letty whispered.

Mrs. Pollifax’s eyes looked at her accusingly. “You should be. Since it’s your own father.”

Letty stared at her in shock. For a long minute, she couldn’t even make sense of the words.

“I’m sorry—I can’t be silent any longer,” the housekeeper said. “Whatever caused you to be estranged from him, you’re wrong to let him die alone. You’ll regret it the rest of your life!”

“My father…?” Letty said slowly. “Is dying?”

Mrs. Pollifax’s expression changed. “You didn’t know?”

Shocked, she shook her head. “There must…must be some mistake. My father’s not sick. He’s fine. He’s living without a care in the world…going to the park every day to play chess…”

“Oh, my dear.” Coming closer, the housekeeper gently put her hand on Letty’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I judged you wrongly. I thought you knew. He collapsed a few weeks ago and has been in the hospital ever since. When I visited him yesterday, he didn’t look well. He might have only weeks left. Days.”

A loud rushing sound went through Letty’s ears.

“No,” she said numbly. “It has to be a mistake.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“You’re wrong.” Shaking off the housekeeper’s hand, Letty reached for her phone. She dialed Darius’s number first. When it went to voice mail, she hung up.

She took a deep breath. Her hands shook as she deliberately broke her vow to her husband for the first time. Her father had always hated cell phones, disparaging them as “tracking devices,” so she called him at their old apartment number.

That, too, went to voice mail. But it was no longer Letty’s voice on the phone greeting. Her father had replaced it with his own. For the first time in two months, she heard his recorded voice, and it sounded different. Fragile. Weak.

Terror rushed through her.

Her body was shaking as she looked up at Mrs. Pollifax. “Which hospital?”

The housekeeper told her. “But you’re in no fit state to drive. I’ll have Collins bring around the car. Shall I come with you?”

Letty shook her head numbly.

The older woman bit her lip, looking sad. “He’s in room 302.”

The drive to Brooklyn seemed to take forever. When they finally arrived at the large, modern hospital, Letty’s body shook as she raced inside.

She didn’t stop at reception, just hurried to the elevator, holding her heavy, aching belly. On the third floor, she followed the signs toward room 302.

Her steps slowed when she saw a man sitting in the waiting area. He looked up and saw her, too. She frowned. She recognized him from somewhere…

But she didn’t stop, just headed straight for her father’s room.

“Miss!” a nurse called anxiously as she passed the third-floor reception desk, barreling toward the corner room. “Please wait just a moment.”

“It’s all right,” Letty said. “I’m his daughter.” She pushed open the door. “Dad. Dad! I’m—”

But the room was empty.

Letty stared around in shock. Was she in the wrong room? Had she misunderstood?

Was he—oh, God—surely he couldn’t be…?

“I’m sorry,” a woman said behind her.

“You should be!” her father’s gruff voice retorted.

With a sob, Letty whirled around.

In the doorway her living, breathing father was sitting in a wheelchair, glaring back at the dark-haired nurse struggling to push him through the doorway.

“You practically ran me into a wall. Where’d you learn how to drive?”

Letty burst into noisy tears. Her father turned his head and saw her, and his gaunt, pale features lit up with joy.

“Letty. You came.”

Throwing her arms around his thin frame in the wheelchair, she choked out, “Of course I came. As soon as I heard you were sick. Then when I didn’t see you in the bed, I thought…”

“Oh, you thought I was dead? No!” Glancing back at the nurse, he added drily, “Not for some people’s lack of trying.”

“Hmph.” The nurse sniffed. “That’s the last time I agree to help you win a wheelchair race, Howard.”

“Win! We didn’t win anything! Margery crushed us by a full ten seconds, in spite of her extra pounds. After all my big talk, too—I’ll never live this down,” he complained.

Letty drew back with astonishment. “Wheelchair race?”

“Admittedly not one of my best ideas, especially with Nurse Crashy here.”

“Hey!”

“But it’s what passes for fun here in the hospice wing. Either that or depress myself with cable news.”

“It’s totally against hospital protocol. I can’t believe you talked me into it. Ask someone else to risk their job next time,” the nurse said.

He gave her his old charming grin. “The race was a good thing. It lifted the spirits of everyone on the wing.”

Looking slightly mollified, she sighed. “I guess I’d better go try convince my boss of that.” She left the room.

Her father turned back to Letty. “But why are you crying? You really thought I was dead?”

She tried to smile. “You’re crying, too, Dad.”

“Am I?” Her father touched his face. He gave her a watery smile. “I’m just glad to see you, I guess. I was starting to wonder if you’d ever come.”

“I came the instant I heard,” she whispered, feeling awful and guilty.

Howard gave a satisfied nod. “I knew he’d eventually tell you.”

“Who?”

“Darius. Sure, I promised I’d never contact you. But there was nothing in our deal that said I couldn’t contact him. I left him a message four weeks ago, when I woke up in the hospital. I’d collapsed in the street, so an ambulance brought me here.”

Four weeks? Letty was numb with shock. Darius had known for a month that her father was in the hospital, just an hour away from Fairholme?

Her father stroked his wispy chin. “Though I’m pretty sure he knew even before that. He’s had me followed since the day you ran off with him. The guy must have noticed me going to my doctor’s office three times a week.”

She sucked in her breath, covering her mouth. Not just one month, but two? Darius had known her father was sick, dying, but he’d purposefully kept it from her?

Your father is spending his days playing chess with friends down at the park.

A lie!

Last night, when she and Darius had been cuddled by the fire, dreaming about their child, even then, her husband had been lying to her. While Letty had been eating cookies and drinking tea, her father had been spending yet another night in this hospital. Alone. Without a single word of love from his only daughter.

A cold sweat broke out on her skin. She trembled as if to fight someone or flee. But there was no escaping the horrible truth.

Darius had lied to her.

The man she’d loved since childhood. The center of all her romantic dreams and longings. He’d known her father was dying, and he’d lied.

How could Darius have been so callous? So selfish, heartless and cruel?

The answer was obvious.

He didn’t love her.

He never would.

A gasp of anguish and rage came from the back of her throat.

“He never gave you the message, did he?” her father said, watching her. When she shook her head, he sighed. “How did you know I was here?”

“Mrs. Pollifax.”

“I see.” He looked sad. Then his eyes fell to her belly and he brightened as he changed the subject. “You’re so big! You’re just a week or two from your due date, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve almost made it.” His voice was smug. “The doctors said I was a goner, but I told them I wasn’t going anyplace yet.”

Letty’s body was still shaking with grief and fury. In the gray light of the hospital room, she turned toward the window. Outside, she saw November rain falling on the East River, and beyond it she could see the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Where Darius was right now.

Howard said dreamily behind her, “I was determined to see my grandbaby before I died.”

She whirled back to her father. “Stop talking about dying!”

His gaunt face sagged. “I’m sorry, Letty. I really am.”

“Isn’t there any hope?” Her voice cracked. “An operation? A—a second opinion?”

Her father’s eyes were kind. He shook his head. “I knew I was dying before I left prison.”

She staggered back. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He rubbed his watery eyes. “I should have, I guess. But I didn’t want you to worry and take all the stress on yourself like you always do. I wanted, for once, to take care of you. I wanted to repair the harm I did so long ago and get you back where you deserved to be. Married to your true love.”

True love, Letty thought bitterly. Her stomach churned every time she thought of Darius lying to her all this time. The unfeeling bastard.

“It was my only goal,” her father said. “To make sure you’d be looked after and loved after I was gone. Now you and Darius are married, expecting a baby.” He grinned with his old verve and said proudly, “Getting my arm broken by that thug was the best thing that ever happened to me, since it helped me bring you back together. I can die at peace. A happy man.”

“Darius never told me you were sick,” she choked out, her throat aching with pain. “I’ll never forgive him.”

Her father’s expression changed. “Don’t blame Darius. After all my self-made disasters, it just shows his good sense. Shows me he’ll protect you better than I ever did.” He looked up from the wheelchair. “Thank you, Letty.”

She felt like the worst daughter in the world. “For what?”

“For always believing in me,” he said softly, “even when you had no reason to. For loving me through everything.”

She looked at her dying father through her tears. Then looked around the hospital room at the plain bed, the tile floor, the antiseptic feel, the ugly medical equipment. She couldn’t bear to think of him spending his last days here, whiling away his hours with wheelchair races.

Her eyes narrowed. “Do you really need to be in the hospital?”

Howard shrugged. “I could have gone to full hospice. Other than pain meds, there’s not much the doctors can do for me.”

Her belly tightened with a contraction that felt like nothing compared to the agony of her heart. She lifted her chin. “Then you’re coming home with me.”

Howard looked at her in disbelief. “Back to that apartment? No, thanks. At least the hospital isn’t cold all the time and someone brings me meals…”

“Not the apartment. I’m taking you to Fairholme.”

His eyes looked dazzled.

“Fairholme?” he breathed. She saw the joy in his wrinkled face. Then he blinked, looking troubled. “But Darius—”

“I’ll handle him.” Wrapping her arms around her father’s thin shoulders, she kissed the wispy top of his head. Her father’s last days would be happy ones, she vowed. He would die in the home that he’d adored, where he’d once lived with his beloved wife and raised his child, surrounded by comfort and love.

Letty would take care of him as he’d once taken care of her.

And, she thought grimly, she’d also take care of Darius.

She’d loved her husband with all her heart. Now she saw that all the sacrifices she’d made, all of her trust, had been for nothing. For an illusion. Darius didn’t love her. He would never love her.

It was his final betrayal. And for this, she would never forgive him.

Darius walked into his office near Battery Park with a smile on his face and a spring in his step. He was late but had an excellent reason. He’d stopped at his favorite jeweler’s on Fifth Avenue to buy a push present for his wife.

He’d read about push presents in a parenthood article. It was a gift that men gave the mothers of their children after labor and delivery, in celebration and appreciation of all their hours of pain and hard work. Since Letty’s due date was so close, Darius had known he had no time to lose. He’d found the perfect gift—exquisite emerald earrings, surrounded by diamonds, set in gold, almost as beautiful as her hazel eyes. They’d even once belonged to a queen of France. With Letty’s love of history, he knew she’d get a kick out of that, and he could hardly wait to give them to her. And even more amazing: when he did, their son would be real at last, and in their arms.

Darius realized he was whistling the same hokey lullaby that his wife had sung in the shower that morning to their unborn baby.

He loved Letty’s voice.

He loved their home.

And he loved that he’d been able to blow off half a morning of work in order to get her a gift. It was supposedly one of the perks of being a boss, but at his last company, he’d been too grimly driven to do anything but grind out work. So he could build his fortune. So he could be worth something.

But even after he’d succeeded, even when he’d finally been rich beyond imagination, he’d been unhappy. He realized that now. He’d spent ten years doing nothing but work, and when he’d sold his company he’d felt lost. Money hadn’t fulfilled him quite as much as he’d thought it would.

But now, everything had changed. Both in his work and his life.

He was building a new company. A free website would teach software coding, math and science skills, so others could have the opportunities he’d had, to get good jobs or perhaps even start their own tech companies someday.

His goal wasn’t to build a fortune. He already had more than he could spend in a lifetime. When he’d paid out billions of dollars to Howard Spencer’s victims, he hadn’t even missed it.

Letty was teaching him—reminding him?—how a good life was lived.

Throughout their marriage, as Fairholme had every day become more beautiful, so had his pregnant wife. She was huge now, and she glowed. Every day she told him how much she loved him. He could feel it, her love for him, warming him like a fire in winter.

There was only one flaw.

One secret he was keeping.

And he knew it might ruin everything.

Darius’s steps slowed as he crossed through the open office with the exposed brick walls.

Letty’s father was dying. And Darius didn’t know how to tell her.

He hadn’t wanted to believe it was true at first. For weeks, he’d insisted it was all an elaborate con. “Call me when he’s dead,” he’d told his investigator half-seriously.

Then he’d gotten a message from Howard Spencer himself, saying he was in the hospital. Even then, for a few days, Darius had told himself it was a lie. Until his investigator had combed through the hospital records and confirmed it was true. Darius had no choice but to face it.

Now he had to tell Letty.

But how? How could he explain to her all his weeks of silence, when he’d known her father was dying in a Brooklyn hospital?

Darius still believed he’d done the right thing. He and Letty had made a deal at the start of their marriage: no contact with her father. There hadn’t been any fine print or “get out of jail free” card if the man decided to die. All Darius had done was uphold their deal. He had nothing to feel guilty about. He hadn’t just paid Spencer’s debts, but also his living expenses and even his medical bills. He’d practically acted like a saint.

Somehow, he didn’t think Letty would see it that way.

Darius dreaded her reaction. He’d halfheartedly started to tell her last night, but stopped, telling himself he didn’t want to risk raising her blood pressure when she was so close to delivery. He didn’t want to risk her health, or the baby’s.

After the baby’s born, he promised himself firmly. Once he knew both mother and baby were safe and sound.

She would be angry at first, he knew. But after she’d had some time to think it over, she’d realize that he’d only been trying to protect her. And it was in her nature to forgive. She had no choice. She loved him.

Feeling calmer, he walked past his executive assistant’s desk toward his private office. “Good morning, Mildred.”

Lifting her eyebrows, she greeted him with “Your wife is on the line.”

“My wife?” A smile lifted unbidden to his face, as it always did when he thought of Letty.

“She said you weren’t answering your cell.”

Instinctively, Darius put his hand to his trouser pocket. It was empty. He must have left it in the car.

“Mrs. Kyrillos sounds pretty stressed.” His executive assistant, usually stern and no-nonsense, gave him a rare smile. “She said it’s urgent.”

Letty never called him at work. His smile changed to a dazed grin. There could be only one reason she’d call now, so close to her due date!

“I’ll take it in my office,” he said joyfully and rushed inside, shutting the door behind him. He snatched up the phone. “Letty? Is it the baby? Are you in labor?”

His wife’s voice sounded strangely flat. “No.”

“Mildred said it was urgent—”

“It is urgent. I’m leaving you. I’m filing for divorce.”

For a long moment he just gripped the phone, that foolish grin still on his face, as he tried to comprehend her words. Then the smile fell away.

“What are you talking about? Is this some kind of joke?”

“No.”

He took a deep breath. “I’ve read about pregnancy hormones…”

Anger suddenly swelled from the other end of the line.

“Pregnancy hormones? Pregnancy hormones? I’m divorcing you because you lied to me. You’ve been lying for months! My father is dying and you never told me!”

Darius’s heart was suddenly in his throat.

“How did you find out?” he whispered.

“Mrs. Pollifax couldn’t understand how I could be such a heartless daughter to just let my father die alone. Don’t worry. I’ve let her know that the heartless one is you.”

He looked up, past his desk to the window overlooking the southern tip of Manhattan, and the Atlantic beyond it. Outside, rain fell in the gray November morning.

He licked his lips and tried, “Letty, I don’t blame you for being upset—”

“Upset? No. I’m not upset.” She paused. “I’m happy.”

That was so obviously not true he had no idea how to react. “If you’ll just give me a chance to explain.”

“You already explained to me, long ago, that you wouldn’t love me. That love was for children. You told me. I just didn’t listen,” she said softly. “Now I really, truly get it. And I want you out of my life for good.”

“No—”

“I’ve brought my father to Fairholme.”

Gripping the phone, he nearly staggered back. “Howard Spencer—in my house?”

“Yes.” Her voice was ice-cold. “I’m not leaving him in the hospital, surrounded by strangers. He’s going to spend his last days surrounded by love, in the home where he was married to my mother.”

“It’s not just your decision. I bought that house and…” He stopped himself, realizing how pompous he sounded. But it was too late.

“Right.” Her voice was a sneer. “Because money makes the man. You think you can buy your way through life. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Buy things. You bought my virginity, and ever since, you’ve kept buying me. With marriage. With money. You didn’t realize it was never your money I wanted.” Her voice suddenly broke to a whisper. “It was you, Darius. My dream of you. The amazing boy you were.” She took a breath. “The man I actually thought you still were, deep down inside.”

“I’m still that man,” he said tightly. “I was going to tell you. I just didn’t want you upset…”

“Upset by my father dying!”

Darius flinched at the derision in her voice. “Perhaps I made a bad decision, but I was trying to look after you.”

“And you assumed I would forgive you.”

He felt shaken. “Forgiveness is what you do.”

She gave a hard laugh. “How convenient for you. Only the idiots who love you have to forgive. But since you never love anyone, you never have to worry about that. You’re free to hurt whomever you please.”

She didn’t sound like his wife at all, the kindhearted woman who greeted him every day with kisses, who gave so much of herself and asked for very little in return.

Except for him to forgive her father, Darius realized. That was the one thing she’d actually asked for. And the one thing he’d refused, again and again.

He, who was never afraid of anything, felt the first stirrings of real fear. “If you’ll just listen to me—”

“I’ve had suitcases boxed up for you. Collins is taking them to your penthouse in Midtown. Don’t worry. I won’t stay here forever. You can have Fairholme back after…” Her voice was suddenly unsteady. “After. I don’t want anything from you in our divorce. The baby and I will be leaving New York.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Poppy Alexander lives in Los Angeles now. She offered me a job a while back. I told her no. Now I’m going to say yes.”

“No.”

“Try and stop me. Just try.” He could hear the ragged gasp of her breath. “You called my dad a monster. You’re the real monster, Darius. Because you know what it was like to have your father die alone. That was the reason for all your vengeance and rage, wasn’t it? That was the big reason you wouldn’t let me see my dad. Well, you know what? My dad nearly died alone, too. Because of you.”

The pang of fear became sharper, piercing down his spine. He licked his lips. “Letty—”

“Stay away from us,” she said in a low voice. “I never want to see you again. Better that our son has no father at all than a heartless one like you.”

The line went dead. He stared down at the phone in his hand.

Numb with shock, Darius raised his head. He looked blankly around his office, still decorated with his wife’s sweet touches. A photo of them on their Greek honeymoon. A sonogram picture of their baby. He stared in bewilderment at the bright blue jeweler’s bag on his desk. The push present for his wife, the emerald earrings once owned by a queen that he’d bought to express his appreciation and joy.

Above him, he could hear the rain falling heavily against the roof. Loud. Like a child’s rattle.

And felt totally alone.

He’d known this would happen. Known if he ever lowered his guard and let himself care, he would get kicked in the teeth. Teeth? He felt like his guts had just been ripped out. For a second, he felt only that physical pain, like the flash of lightning before thunder.

Then the emotional impact reached his heart, and he had to lean one hand on his desk to keep his balance. The pain he felt then was almost more than he could bear.

Standing in his office, in the place he’d been happily whistling a lullaby just moments before, anguish and rage rushed through him. Throwing out his arm, he savagely knocked the jewelry bag to the ground.

Suddenly, he could almost understand why Howard Spencer had turned criminal when he’d lost his wife. Because Darius suddenly wanted to set fire to everything in his life, to burn it all down.

Slowly, as if he’d gained fifty years, he walked out of his office.

“Everything all right, sir?” Mildred Harrison said serenely from her desk. “Are you headed to the hospital for Mrs. Kyrillos?”

Mrs. Kyrillos. He almost laughed at the name. She’d never been his wife, not really. How could she, when she’d seen through him from the start?

You always said a man could be measured by his money.

He looked slowly around the bustling office loft, with its exposed brick walls, its high ceilings, the open spaces full of employees busily working on computers or taking their breaks at the foosball table. He said softly, “No.”

His executive assistant frowned. “Sir?”

“I don’t want it anymore.” Darius looked at her. “Take the company. You can have it. I’m done.”

And he left without looking back.

He spent the afternoon in one of Manhattan’s old dive bars, trying to get drunk. He could have called Santiago Velazquez or Kassius Black, but they weren’t exactly the kind of friends who shared confidences and feelings. Darius had only really done that with Letty. He told himself Scotch would keep him company now.

It didn’t.

Finally he gave up. He was alone. He would always be alone. Time to accept it.

Dropped off by the taxi, Darius came home late that night to his dark penthouse. All the bright lights of Manhattan sparkled through the floor-to-ceiling windows. He saw nothing but darkness and shadows.

And three expensive suitcases left in his foyer. Suitcases Letty had packed for him when she’d taken his measure, found him completely lacking and tossed him out of their family home.

You think you can buy your way through life. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Buy things.

Slowly, Darius looked around the stark, impersonal penthouse at the sparse, expensive furniture. Everything was black and white. He’d bought this place two years ago, as a trophy to show how far he’d come from the poverty-stricken village boy he’d once been. A trophy to prove to himself that Letitia Spencer had made a fatal error the day she’d decided he wasn’t good enough to marry.

This penthouse was not his home.

His home was Fairholme.

Darius closed his eyes, thinking of the windswept oceanfront manor with its wide windows over the Great South Bay and the Atlantic beyond. The roses, fields and beach. The sun-drenched meadow where he’d taught Letty to dance. Where he’d first learned to love.

Letty.

He opened his eyes with a slow intake of breath.

Letty was his home.

Even during their brief marriage, he’d experienced happiness he’d never known before. The comfort and love of having a wife who put him first, who waited for him every night, who kissed him with such passion. Who slept warm and willing beside him every night in bed.

More than that. She’d reminded him who he’d once been.

You didn’t realize it was never your money I wanted. It was you, Darius. My dream of you. The amazing boy you were. The man I actually thought you still were, deep down inside.

Numbly, he looked out the two-story-high windows that overlooked the twinkling lights of the city.

Letty was always determined to protect those she loved. Now she was trying to protect their child from him. Just as he’d once tried to protect Letty from her father.

You called my dad a monster. You’re the real monster.

He leaned his forehead against the cold window glass.

Howard Spencer had been a good man once. He’d been a good employer to Darius’s father and kind to everyone, including the scared eleven-year-old boy newly arrived from Greece. Then he’d changed after he’d lost his beloved wife.

What was Darius’s excuse?

He took a deep breath, looking out bleakly into the night. Why had he been so determined to wreak vengeance on her father? So determined that he hadn’t even cared how badly it might hurt Letty as collateral damage?

He should have told her the truth from the start.

He should have taken her in his arms. He should have fallen to his knees. He should have told her he was sorry, and that he’d do whatever it took to make it right.

Why hadn’t he?

What the hell was wrong with him?

Darius had convinced himself he was justified for his actions, because he blamed Howard Spencer for his father’s early, unhappy death.

Letty was right. He was a liar. And he’d lied to himself worst of all.

The truth was, deep in his heart, there had always been only one person Darius truly blamed for his father’s death, and it had been too painful for him to face till now.

Himself.

He closed his eyes as a memory that he’d pushed away for over a decade pummeled him. But today, he could no longer resist the waves of guilt and shame as he remembered.

Eugenios had called Darius in the middle of the day.

“I’ve lost everything, son.” His Greek father, usually so distant and gruff, had sounded lost, bewildered. “I just got a certified letter. It says all my life savings—everything I invested with Mr. Spencer—it’s all gone.”

Darius had been busy working in his first rented office, a windowless Manhattan basement. He’d only gotten three hours of sleep the night before. It was the first time the two men had talked in months, since Letty had dumped him and caused Eugenios to be fired and tossed from Fairholme. Just hearing his voice that day had reminded Darius of everything he was trying so hard to forget. A lifetime of resentment had exploded.

“I guess that pays you back for all your loyalty to Spencer, huh, Dad? All those years when you put him first, even over your own family.”

Darius had been so young, so self-righteous. It made him feel sick now to remember it.

“That was my job.” His father’s voice had trembled. “I wanted to make sure I never lost a job again. Never felt again like I did that awful day we found you on the doorstep…”

The awful day they found him? Darius’s hurt and anger blocked out the rest of his father’s words as Eugenios continued feebly, “I had no money. No job. I couldn’t let my family starve. You don’t know what that does to a man, to have nothing…”

It was the most his father had ever spoken to him. And Darius’s cold reply had haunted him ever since.

“So you had nothing then, huh, Dad? Well, guess what? You have nothing now. You ignored me my whole childhood for nothing. You have nothing. You are nothing.”

He’d hung up the phone.

An hour later, his father had quietly died of a heart attack in his Queens apartment, sinking to his kitchen floor, where he was found later by a neighbor.

Darius’s hands tightened to fists against the window.

His father had never been demonstrative. In Darius’s childhood, there had been no hugs and very little praise. Even the attention of criticism was rare.

But Darius and his grandmother hadn’t starved. Eugenios had provided for them. He’d taught his work ethic by example. He’d worked hard, trying to give his son a better life.

And after all his years of stoically supporting them, after he’d lost his job and money, Darius had scorned him.

Remembering it now, he felt agonizing shame.

He hadn’t wanted to remember the last words he’d spoken to his proud Greek father. So instead he’d sought vengeance on Howard Spencer, carefully blaming him alone.

Darius had thought if he never loved anyone, he’d never feel pain; and if he was rich, he’d be happy.

Look at me now, he thought bitterly, surveying the elegant penthouse. Surrounded by money. And never more alone.

He missed Letty.

Craved her desperately.

He loved her.

Darius looked up in shock.

He’d never stopped loving her.

All these years, he’d tried to pretend he didn’t. Tried to control her, to possess her, to pretend he didn’t care. He’d hidden his love away like a coward, afraid of the pain and shame of possible loss, while Letty let her love shine for all the world to see.

He’d thought Letty weak? He took a shuddering breath. She was the strongest person he knew. She’d offered him loyalty, kindness, self-sacrifice. She’d offered him every bit of her heart and soul. And in return, he’d offered her money.

Darius clawed back his hair. She was right. He’d tried to buy her. But money didn’t make the man.

Love did.

Darius loved her. He was completely, wildly in love with Letty. He wanted to be her husband. To live with her. To raise their baby. To be happy. To be home.

His eyes narrowed.

But how? How could he show her he had more to offer? How could he convince her to forgive him?

Forgiveness. His lips twisted with the bitter irony. The very thing he’d refused to give her all these months, he would now be begging for…

But for her, he’d do anything. He set his jaw. With the same total focus he’d built his empire, he would win back his wife.

Over the next month, he tried everything.

He respected her demand that he stay away from her, even after his friend Velazquez sent him a link to a birth announcement, and he saw his son had been safely born, weighing seven pounds and fourteen ounces. Both mother and baby were doing well.

Darius had jumped up, overwhelmed with the need to go see them in the hospital, to hold them in his arms.

But he knew bursting into her room against her express wishes would have only made things worse, not better. So he restrained himself, though it took all his self-control. He cleaned out a flower shop and sent all the flowers and toys and gifts to her maternity suite at the hospital. Anonymously.

Then he’d waited hopefully.

He’d found out later that she’d immediately forwarded all the flowers, toys and gifts straight to the sick children’s ward.

Well played, he’d thought with a sigh. But he wasn’t done. He’d contacted Mildred and she’d sent him via courier the jewelry bag he’d left in his office. He’d sent it to Fairholme, again anonymously.

A few days later he received a thank-you card from Mrs. Pollifax, stating that the earrings had been sold and the money donated to the housekeeper’s favorite charity, an animal shelter on Long Island.

He’d ground his teeth, but doggedly kept trying. Over the next week, he sent gifts addressed to Letty. He sent a card congratulating her on the baby. On Thanksgiving, he even had ten pies from her favorite bakery delivered to her at Fairholme.

Pies she immediately forwarded to a homeless shelter.

As the rain of November changed to the snows of December, Darius’s confidence started to wane. Once, in a moment of weakness, he drove by Fairholme late at night, past the closed gate.

But she was right. He couldn’t even see the house.

After the pie incident, Darius gave up sending gifts. When she continued to refuse his calls, he stopped those, too. He kept writing heartfelt letters, and for a few weeks, he was hopeful, until they were all returned at once, unopened.

His baby son was now four weeks old. The thought made him sick with grief. Darius hadn’t seen him. Hadn’t held him. He didn’t even know his name.

His wife wanted to divorce him. His son didn’t have a father. Darius felt like a failure.

In the past, he would have taken his sense of grief and powerlessness and hired the most vicious, shark-infested law firm in Manhattan to punish her, to file for full custody.

But he didn’t want that.

He wanted her.

He wanted his family back.

Finally, as Christmas approached, he knew he was out of ideas. He had only one card left to play. But when he went to see his lawyer, the man’s jaw dropped.

“If you do this, Mr. Kyrillos, in my opinion you’re a fool.”

He was right. Darius was a fool. Because this was his last desperate hope.

But was he brave enough to actually go through with it? Could he jump off that cliff, and take a gamble that would either win him back the woman he loved, or cost him literally everything?

The afternoon of Christmas Eve Darius got the package from his lawyer. He was holding it in his hands, pacing his penthouse apartment like a trapped animal when his phone rang. Lifting it from his pocket, he saw the number from Fairholme.

His heart started thudding frantically. He snatched it up so fast he almost dropped it before he placed it against his ear. “Letty?”

But it wasn’t his wife. Instead, the voice on the line belonged to the last person he’d ever imagined would call him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“IT’S YOUR VERY first Christmas,” Letty crooned to her tiny baby, walking him through Fairholme’s great hall. She was already dressed for Christmas Eve dinner in a long scarlet velvet dress and soft kid leather bootees. She’d dressed her newborn son in an adorable little Santa outfit.

She’d asked Mrs. Pollifax to make all her father’s holiday favorites, ham, plum pudding, potatoes, in hopes of tempting him to eat more than his usual scant bites. They’d even brought the dining table into the great hall, beside the big stone fireplace, so they could have dinner beneath the enormous Christmas tree.

Letty wanted this Christmas to be perfect. Because she knew it would be her father’s last. The doctor had said yesterday that Howard’s body was failing rapidly. It would likely be only days now.

Her heart twisted with grief. Her only comfort was that she’d tried her best to make his last few weeks special.

A lump rose in Letty’s throat as she looked up at the two-story-high tree, decorated with sparkling lights and a mix of ornaments, old and new. Some of them Letty had treasured since childhood. And now they were back here, where they belonged. Funny to think she had Darius to thank for that. If he hadn’t found her in Brooklyn and stopped her from taking that desperate bus ride out of the city, the ornaments would have been long lost to a junk dealer or the landfill.

Without him, she wouldn’t be here now. Her father couldn’t have come to Fairholme for his last Christmas, nor would her baby be here for his first one. It was because of Darius.

She missed him. No matter how much she denied it. No matter how she tried not to.

Every time some thoughtful gift had arrived at the house, she’d pictured how her father had looked in the hospital, so pale and alone. She’d remembered how Darius had taken her love for granted, and selfishly lied. She’d told herself she was done loving someone who could never love her back.

But as the gifts tapered off, and the phone calls stopped, and the letters stopped arriving in the mail, she hadn’t felt triumphant. At all.

“I hate him,” she said aloud. “I never want to see him again.” She wasn’t sure she sounded convincing, even to her own ears. So turning to her son, she held out one of the homemade ornaments. “Look!”

“Gah,” the baby replied, waving his little hands unsteadily.

“You’re so smart!” She let him feel the soft fabric of the dove against his cheek, then put it back on the tree before he tried to eat it. “Your grandma Constance made that,” she said softly. “I just wish she could have met you.”

Her six-week-old baby smiled back, Letty would swear he did, even though her father continued to rather annoyingly claim it was only gas. Letty knew her own baby, didn’t she?

Even though Darius didn’t.

The thought caused an unpleasant jolt. She’d thought she was doing the right thing to exclude him. She couldn’t allow such a heartless man near her baby. Even if he was the father.

But Darius hadn’t even laid eyes on their baby, or held him, or heard the sweet gurgle of his voice or his angry cry when he wasn’t fed fast enough. Darius had already missed so much. Six weeks of sleepless nights, of exhaustion and confusion.

But also six weeks of getting to know this brand-new little person. From the moment her son had been placed in her arms at the hospital, Letty had felt her heart expand in a way she’d never known before.

Darius didn’t know that feeling. He didn’t know his son at all. Because of her actions.

Two weeks ago, her baby had been irritable and sleepless at midnight, so she’d wrapped him in a warm blanket and put him in the stroller to walk him up and down the long driveway, behind the gate. Then she’d seen a dark sports car driving slowly by.

Darius! She’d practically run to the gate, panting as she pushed the stroller ahead of her. But by the time she reached the gate, the car was long gone. For long moments she stared through the bars of the gate, looking bleakly down the dark, empty road, hearing only the waves crashing down on the shore. And she’d realized for the first time how empty the house felt without him, even with her father and her baby and all the household staff. She missed him.

No. I don’t, she told herself desperately. And if she hadn’t filed for divorce yet or hired an attorney, that was only because she just hadn’t had the time. Taking care of a newborn, caring for her father and decorating for Christmas would be enough to keep anyone busy, wouldn’t it?

Letty’s lips twisted downward. She’d said things that would never be forgiven. She’d made her choice clear. She’d used his every olive branch as a stick to stab him with.

That car probably hadn’t even been his. He’d probably moved on entirely, and if she ever heard from him again, it would be only via his lawyer, demanding custody. She stiffened at the thought.

Carrying her baby up to the nursery, she fed him, rocking him for nearly an hour in the glider until he slept and she was nearly asleep herself. She smiled down at his sweet little face. His cheeks were already growing chubby. Tucking him gently in his crib for his late afternoon nap, she turned on the baby monitor and crept out of the darkened nursery.

She closed the door softly behind her. Light from the leaded glass windows reflected against the glossy hardwood floors and oak paneling of the second-floor hallway, resting with a soft haze on an old framed family photo on the wall. She looked at her own chubby face when she’d been just a toddler with two parents beaming behind her.

Trying to ignore the ache in her throat, Letty started to turn toward the stairs. Then she heard low male voices coming from down the hall.

Her father’s bedroom was the nicest and biggest, the room he’d once shared with her mother, with a view of the sea. He rarely got up from his bed anymore, except when Letty managed to cajole him into his wheelchair and take him down in the elevator for a stroll around the winter garden, or to sit in a comfortable spot near the fire, beneath the Christmas tree, as the baby lay nearby.

But the male voice Letty heard talking to her father didn’t sound like Paul, his nurse. Who was it? Frowning, she drew closer.

“Yes,” she heard her father say, his voice a little slurred. “Always a good kid.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying that, after everything.”

Hearing the visitor’s voice, low and clear, Letty’s knees went weak outside her father’s door. What was Darius doing here? How had he gotten into Fairholme?

“You weren’t so bad. Just prickly, like your father. Eugenios was the best employee I ever had. We used to talk about you. He loved you.”

“He had a funny way of showing it.” Her husband’s voice wasn’t bitter, just matter-of-fact.

Howard gave a laugh that ended in a wheeze. “In our generation, fathers showed love differently.”

“Yet Letty always knew you loved her.”

“I didn’t grow up with your father’s fears.” Howard paused. “From the age of fifteen, he was your grandmother’s sole support. When you came along, he lost any chance of a job in Greece.”

“I know.”

“His greatest fear was of not providing for you.” Coughing a laugh, Howard added, “Maybe if I’d been a little more careful about that myself, I wouldn’t have left my daughter destitute while I spent years in prison. It’s only because of you that we’re back home now. That’s why I called. I’m grateful.”

Darius’s voice was suddenly urgent. “Then convince Letty to stay.”

“Stay? Where would she go?”

“She says as soon as you’re dead, she’s leaving New York.”

Howard gave a low laugh. “That sounds like her. Foolish as her old man. Can’t see the love right in front of her eyes, has to flee her own happiness because she’s afraid. Actually, now that I think about it, she sounds like you.”

Letty’s heart was pounding as she leaned against the oak-paneled wall beside the open door, holding absolutely still as she listened intently.

Silence. Then Darius said in a voice so low she almost couldn’t hear, “I’m sorry I blamed you for my father’s death all these years. The truth is, the person I really hated was myself. I said something terrible to my dad right before he died. I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Whatever it was,” Howard said simply, “your father forgave you long ago. He knew you loved him. Just as he loved you. He was proud of you, Darius. And seeing that you were brave enough to come here today, I am, too.”

Her father was proud of the man who’d treated her so badly, who’d lied to her? Letty sucked in her breath with an astonished little squeak.

There was a pause.

“Letty,” her father said drily, “I know you’re there. Come in.”

Her heart was in her throat. She wanted to flee but knew she’d only look foolish and cowardly. Lifting her chin, she went into her father’s room.

His bedroom was full of light from the bay window. Her father was stretched out beneath the blankets, propped up by pillows, his nightstand covered with pill bottles. His gaunt face smiled up at her weakly, his eyes glowing with love.

Then, with a deep breath, Letty looked at the man standing beside the bed.

Tall and broad-shouldered and alive, Darius seemed to radiate power. For a moment, her eyes devoured his image. He was dressed simply in a dark shirt, dark jeans. His hands lifted, then fell to his sides as he looked at her, as if he had to physically restrain himself from touching her. But his dark eyes seared her. Their heartbreak and yearning cut her to the bone.

Her body reacted involuntarily, stumbling back as her heart pounded with emotion. Fury. Regret. Longing…

“What are you doing here?” she whispered.

“He’s here to meet his son,” her father said.

She whirled on her father, feeling betrayed. “Dad!”

“And I want him to stay for Christmas Eve dinner,” he continued calmly.

She stared at him in shock. “No!”

Her father gave her a weakened version of his old charming smile. “Surely you wouldn’t refuse your dying father his last Christmas wish?”

No. Of course she couldn’t. She ground her teeth. “He kept me from you for two months!”

Her father stared her down. “Only a little longer than you’ve kept him from his son.”

“I would like to meet him,” Darius said quietly. “But if you don’t want me around after that, I won’t stay.”

Trembling, she tossed her head defiantly. “Did he tell you the baby’s name?”

“No.”

“It’s Howard.” She lifted her chin, folding her arms. “Howard Eugenios Spencer.”

To her shock, Darius didn’t scowl or bluster. He didn’t even flinch. He just looked at her with that same strange glow of longing in his eyes.

“That’s not the name I would have chosen.” Triumph surged through her as she waited for him to be sarcastic and show his true colors in front of her father. Instead, he just said quietly, “His last name should be Kyrillos.”

Darius was upset only about the surname? Not about the fact that she’d named their precious baby son after her father—his hated enemy?

“Aren’t you furious?” she said, dropping her arms in bewilderment.

His lips curved as he looked down at her father, then slowly shook his head. “Not as much as I used to be.”

Darius came toward her. It took all Letty’s willpower not to step back from him as he towered over her. It wasn’t him she was afraid of, but herself. Her whole body was trembling with her own longing. Her need. She missed him.

But she couldn’t. She’d made her choice! She wouldn’t be married to a man who didn’t love her!

“Please let me see my son,” he said humbly. He bowed his head, as if waiting for her verdict.

“Let him,” her father said.

Looking between the two men, she knew she was outnumbered. She snapped, “Fine.”

Turning on her heel, she walked out. She didn’t look back to see if Darius was following her. Her hands were trembling.

All these weeks when she’d pushed him away, she’d pictured him as angry, arrogant, heartless. It was why she hadn’t been tempted to open his letters—why would she, when she knew he’d only be yelling at her?

She’d never once imagined Darius looking at her the way he did now, with such heartbreaking need. But it wasn’t just desire. He had an expression in his eyes that she hadn’t seen since—

No! She wasn’t going to let her own longing talk her into seeing things in his eyes that weren’t there, things that didn’t exist.

Pressing a finger to her lips, she quietly pushed open the nursery door and crept into the shadowy room, motioning for him to follow. Darius came in behind her.

Then, as they both stood over the crib, Letty made the mistake of looking at her husband when he saw their son for the very first time.

Darius’s dark eyes turned fierce, almost bewildered with love when he looked at their sleeping baby. Tenderly, he reached out in the semidarkness and stroked his dark downy head as he slept.

“My son,” he whispered. “My sweet boy.”

A lump rose in her throat so huge it almost choked her. And she suddenly knew that Darius wasn’t the only one who’d been heartless.

What had she done?

Blinded by furious grief at his lie about her father, Letty had actually kept Darius from his own firstborn son. For six weeks.

Anguish and regret rushed through her in a torrent of pain. Even if Darius could never love her, she had no doubt that he loved their baby. Especially as she watched him now, gently stroking their baby’s small back through his Santa onesie as the sleeping child gave a soft snuffle in the shadowy room.

She’d had no right to steal his child away.

“I’m sorry,” she choked out. He looked up.

“You’re sorry?”

Unable to speak for misery, she nodded.

Reaching out in the shadowy nursery, beneath the hazy colors of the goose girl fresco, Darius put his hand gently on Letty’s shoulder, and she shuddered beneath his touch.

“Letty…there’s something you should know.”

Their eyes locked, and she saw something in his black eyes that made the world tremble beneath her feet.

Panic rushed through her heart. Seeing Darius make peace with her father, seeing him look so lovingly at their baby, had cracked open her soul and everything she hadn’t wanted to feel had rushed in.

She’d painted him so badly in her mind. She’d called him a monster. And yes, he never should have lied about her father.

But when she’d said horrible things and threatened to take his child permanently away, he hadn’t hired some awful lawyer to fight her. He’d done what she asked, and stayed away. Obviously at great emotional cost.

Now, she saw his sensual lips part, heard his hoarse intake of breath and knew whatever he was about to say would change her life forever. He was going to tell her he was done with her. She’d won. He’d given up. Now he wanted to talk like reasonable adults about sharing custody of their son.

She’d destroyed their marriage with her anger and pride. She’d told herself she’d rather be alone than married to a man who didn’t love her. Now she suddenly couldn’t bear to hear him speak the words that would end it…

“No,” she choked out.

Turning, she fled the nursery. She ran down the hall, down the stairs, her heart pounding, gasping for breath.

She heard him coming down after her. “Letty!”

She didn’t stop. Pushing off the stairs, she ran outside, into the snow.

Her mother’s rose garden was barren in winter, nothing but thorny vines and dead leaves covered in a blanket of white. Letty’s soft black boots stumbled forward, her long red dress dragging behind, scarlet against the snow.

But he swiftly caught her, roughly pushing her wrists against the outside wall of the greenhouse with its flash of exotic greenery behind the steamy glass. She struggled, but he wouldn’t let go.

She felt his heat. His power. She felt the strength of her own longing for this man, whom she continued to love in the face of despair.

“Let me go,” she cried.

“Forgive me,” Darius choked out. He lowered his head against hers. She heard the heavy gasp of his breath. “You were right, Letty. About everything. I’m so sorry.”

Her lips parted. She looked up at him in shock.

“You’re sorry?” she whispered. “I kept you from our baby.”

“You were right to kick me out of your life.” He cupped her face in both his hands. “I blamed you and your father for so much. I blamed everyone but the person really at fault. Myself.”

“Darius—”

“No.” He held up his hand. “Let me say this. I don’t know if I’ll get another chance.”

All around them in the silent white garden, soft snow began to fall from the lowering gray clouds. Letty’s heart was suddenly in her throat. Now he was going to tell her that they were better off apart…

“You’re right, Letty,” he said in a low voice. “I did try to buy you. I thought money was all I had to offer anyone. I thought I could selfishly claim your love, while being cowardly enough to protect my own heart. But I failed.” He gave a low laugh. “The truth is, I failed long ago.”

His dark eyes had a suspicious gleam. Surely Darius Kyrillos, the ruthless Greek billionaire, couldn’t have tears in his eyes? No. It must be the cold winter wind, whipping against his skin.

“I loved you, Letty. It terrified me. My whole life, all I’ve ever known of love is loss. Losing you all those years ago almost destroyed me. I never wanted to feel like that again. So I buried my soul in ice. Then when I saw you again, when I first took you to my bed, everything changed. Against my will, the ice cracked. But even then I was afraid.” Taking a deep breath, he lifted his eyes to hers. “I’m not afraid anymore.”

“You’re not?” she whispered, her heart falling.

With a little smile, he shook his head. He took her hand in his larger one. “Now I know the truth is that love never ends. Not real love. The love your father has for you and my father had for me. The love your parents had for each other.” His hand tightened over hers as he said softly, “And even if you divorce me, Letty, even if you never want to see me again after tonight, I can still love you. And it won’t bring me pain, but joy, because of everything you’ve brought to my life. You saved me. Made me feel again. Taught me to love again. Gave me a son.” Stroking her cheek, he whispered, “No matter what happens, I will always be grateful. And love you.”

His hand was warm over hers. With him so close, she didn’t even feel the snow. Trembling, she whispered, “Darius…what are you saying?”

His jaw tightened. “If you still want to divorce me, you won’t need a lawyer.” He reached into his shirt pocket, where a single page was folded in quarters. “Here.”

Opening the paper, she looked down at it numbly. She tried to read it, but the words jumbled together. “What’s this?”

“Everything,” he said quietly. “Fairholme. The jets. My stocks, bonds, bank accounts. It’s all been transferred to your name. Everything I possess.”

She gasped, then shook her head. “But you know money doesn’t mean anything to me!”

“Yes, I know that.” He looked at her. “But you know what it means to me.”

Letty’s eyes went wide.

Because she did know what Darius’s fortune meant to him. It meant ten years of twenty-hour workdays and sleeping in basements. It meant working till he collapsed, day after day, with no time to relax or see friends. No time to even have friends. It meant borrowing money that he knew he’d have to pay back, even if his business failed. It meant taking terrifying risks and praying they would somehow pay off.

Those dreams had been fulfilled. Through work and will and luck, a poverty-stricken boy whose mother had abandoned him as a baby had built a multibillion-dollar empire.

This was what she now held in her hand.

“But I’m not just offering you my fortune, Letty,” he said quietly. “I’m offering everything. My whole life. Everything I’ve been. Everything I am.” Lifting her hand, he pressed it against his rough cheek and whispered, “I offer you my heart.”

Letty realized she was crying.

“I love you, Letitia Spencer Kyrillos,” he said hoarsely. “I know I’ve lost your love, your trust. But I’ll do everything I can to regain your devotion. Even if it takes me a hundred years, I’ll never…”

“Stop.” Violently, she pushed the paper against his chest. When he wouldn’t take it, it fell to the snow.

“Letty,” he choked out, his dark eyes filled with misery.

“I don’t want it.” She lifted her hand to his scratchy cheek, rough and unshaven. Reaching her other arm around his shoulders, she whispered, “I just want you, Darius.”

The joy that lit up his dark eyes was brighter than the sun.

“I don’t deserve you.”

“I’m not exactly perfect myself.”

He immediately began protesting that she was, in fact, perfect in every way.

“It doesn’t matter.” Smiling, she reached up on her toes to kiss him, whispering, “We can just love each other, flaws and all.”

Holding her tight, he kissed her passionately against the greenhouse, with the hot wet jungle behind the glass, as they embraced in the snow-swept bare garden. They kissed each other in a private vow that would endure all the future days of sunshine and snow, good times and bad, all the laughter and anger and pleasure and forgiveness until death.

Their love was meant to be. It was fate. Moíra.

They clung to each other until he broke apart with a guilty laugh.

“Ah, Letty, I’ll never be perfect, that’s for sure,” Darius murmured, smiling down at her through his tears. “But there’s one thing you should know…” Cupping her cheek, lightly drawing away the cold wet tendrils of her hair that had stuck to her skin, he whispered, “For you, I intend to spend the rest of my life trying.”

Spring came early to Fairholme.

Darius had a bounce in his step as he came into the house that afternoon with a bouquet of flowers. He’d had to work on a Saturday because it was crunch time developing the new website. But he was hoping the flowers would make her forgive the fact that he’d missed their new Saturday morning family tradition of waffles and bacon.

Darius had started that tradition himself, in the weeks he’d taken to focus only on Letty and their beloved son, whom they’d nicknamed Howie. After that, encouraged by Letty, he’d sheepishly called Mildred and apologized, then asked if there was any way she could try to reassemble his team at the office.

“The office is still in fine fettle,” she’d replied crisply. “I’ve been running everything just as you requested. I knew whatever you were going through you’d soon come to your senses. I haven’t worked for you all these years for nothing.”

He choked out a laugh, then said with real gratitude, “What would I do without you?”

“You’ll find out next summer,” she’d said firmly, “when you send my husband and me on a four-week first-class cruise through Asia. It’s already booked.”

Darius grinned to himself, remembering. He was grateful to Mildred. Grateful to all the people around him, his employees and most of all his family, who saw through all his flaws but were somehow willing to put up with him anyway.

Money didn’t make the man. He knew that now. What made a man was what he did with his life. With his time. With his heart.

His father-in-law had died in January, surrounded by family, with a smile on his drawn face. Right before he died, his eyes suddenly glowed with joy as he breathed, “Oh. There you are…”

“He saw my mother before he died,” Letty told Darius afterward, her beautiful face sparkling with tears. “How can I even be sad, when I know they’re together?”

Darius wasn’t so sure, but who was he to say? Love could work miracles. He was living proof of that.

Now he looked around his home with deep contentment. The oak floors gleamed and fresh-cut flowers from the greenhouse filled all the vases.

Fairholme was about to be invaded by more of the Kyrillos family. He’d sent his private plane to Heraklios, and tomorrow, Theia Ioanna, along with a few cousins, would arrive for a monthlong visit. His great-aunt’s desire to meet her great-great-nephew had finally overcome her fear of flying.

He relished the thought of having his extended family here. Heaven knew Fairholme had plenty of room.

Love was everywhere. Love was everything. His son was only five months old, but he’d already collected toys from all the people who loved him around the globe. His wife did that, he thought. With her great heart, she brought everyone together with her kindness and loyalty. She was the center of Darius’s world.

“Letty!” he called, holding the flowers tightly.

“She’s outside, Mr. Kyrillos,” the housekeeper called from the kitchen. “The weather’s so fine, she and the baby went for a picnic in the meadow.”

Dropping his computer bag, he went outside, past the garden, where even though the air was cool beneath the sunshine, tulips and daffodils were starting to bloom. He walked the path through the softly waving grass until he reached the meadow where he’d first taught his wife to dance. Where she’d first taught him to dream.

He stopped.

The sky was a vivid blue, the meadow the rich gold-green of spring, and in the distance, he could see the ocean. He saw Letty’s beautiful face, alight with joy, as she sang their five-month-old baby a song in Greek, swinging him gently in her arms as he giggled and shrieked with happiness. Behind them on the hillside, a blanket was covered with a picnic basket, teething toys and that well-worn book about the bunny rabbit. But now, as always, Letty was dancing. Letty was singing.

Letty was love.

Darius stared at them, and for a moment the image caught at his heart, as he wondered what he’d ever done to deserve such happiness.

Then, quickening his steps, he raced to join them.

Claimed for His Duty

Tara Pammi

CHAPTER ONE

LEAH HUNTINGTON COLLAPSED onto the plastic chair behind her small desk, her knees buckling out from under her. The red stamp spelling out “REJECTED” on the application form blurred in front of her eyes. Her heart squeezed painfully as she fingered the flat sketches on her drawing board, the possibility of seeing her creation take form now evaporating like a puff of smoke.

Sweat ran down her back, the slow whir of the ceiling fan scraping against her nerves. She ran cramped up fingers over her neck, feeling the muscles tighten with tension.

Mrs. DuPont, the buying manager for a retail store, had given Leah only two months to create her first collection and all Leah had now were flat sketches. And as she had to do everything herself instead of contacting a factory like she did for the fashion house, every minute was important.

The most important of it being the funds she required to source raw materials… There were a hundred things she needed and it was all sitting in that bank.

She dialed the number for the bank manager she had spoken to just two days ago.

Her heart hammered painfully, thudding faster and faster, an ominous pounding she couldn’t breathe past. There could be only one man behind this. Her stomach twisted as the bank manager coughed on the other end of the phone. His answer was curt, immediate as though he had been rehearsing the explanation, waiting for Leah to call.

They couldn’t use the trust fund as security to approve her loan because—Leah could hear the hushed reverence in the manager’s voice as he uttered the name—the trustee overseeing her fund had denied the use of the trust fund, her trust fund, as security.

Stavros.

Leah threw the handset across the room, every inch of her shaking. She kicked the chair aside, the impact of it jarring up her leg, every nerve cell in her humming with outrage.

How much more was he going to punish her? How long was she going to let him?

She picked up the phone again, her vision blurry now with unchecked tears. Her throat burned as she took a deep breath, her thumb hovering over the numbers on the handset.

She wanted to demand an explanation, she wanted to…

But what was the point? His secretary would politely tell her that he was not available. It was the same answer she had received over the last year every time she had tried to contact him. Even though they both lived in Athens, they might as well have been living on the opposite ends of the planet.

She bit her lower lip, her nails digging into her skin. A sob built inside her chest, fury rising through her like a storm that could swallow her in its clutches.

She had to put an end to this. She had to break free of the leash he bound her with, controlling her every step, every choice, while he enjoyed his life. She had let him do it for five years.

Five years of a sterile life, five years of being his prisoner—that she had accepted out of guilt and fear.

Scrubbing the tears from her cheeks, she pulled up the society feature she had purposely clicked away from this morning on her laptop.

Stavros’s business partner and her grandfather’s second godson, Dmitri Karegas, was throwing a party aboard his yacht.

Stavros and Dmitri were cut from the same cloth—breathtakingly gorgeous, built their empires from nothing under her grandfather Giannis’s guidance, and considered themselves gods, their will law for the normal mortals they walked amongst.

Stavros hated parties with an intensity Leah had never been able to understand, but Dmitri would be there.

She just had to make sure the decadent playboy, who apparently was always surrounded by a group of willing women, noticed her presence aboard his latest toy.

Had to, somehow, gain his attention.

Her stomach clenched as she shoved the bedroom door open and walked toward the closet.

Every step toward it, every thought in this direction—was like walking to her own doom.

But Stavros had left her no choice…left her with no way out.

She dialed another number on her phone and booked a taxi. A shiver traveled over her spine as she viciously pushed the cotton tops and skirts in her closet away until she reached the end.

She pulled the gold silk dress, the one designer label she had kept, her fingers shaking violently as she realized how little fabric there was of the dress. Her back would be totally bare, which meant she had to go without a bra.

And it would leave most of her legs, her thighs bare too. So no underwear either.

Five years ago, she hadn’t even blinked when she had worn it. Had thought it nothing to parade around with Alex and Calista, showing every bit of skin she could expose, barely looking decent…

And she had been almost twenty pounds heavier…

Just thinking of how she must have looked then made her cringe.

What the hell had the designer been thinking? What the hell had she been thinking?

She had been trying to please Calista, who had decreed she wear it that night… That’s what she had been thinking.

Yet nothing else in her closet would do for tonight.

Of all the things to think about when her life was eternally stuck in this rut, when the very walls of this apartment were closing in on her…

Her palms were sweating as she pulled the dress to herself. The dress would fall scandalously above her knees, just about covering her buttocks.

It was the most outrageous dress she owned, the sartorial equivalent of a tramp and she had worn it the night Stavros had decided her fate. Fitting then that it was the one that would at least get her an audience with the man who was her jailor.

Every muscle in her trembled, and her mouth was coated with bitter fear as she walked into the bathroom and splashed water on her face.

He was going to explode, he was going to despise her even more, if that was possible. But she couldn’t bear this…this isolation anymore.

She couldn’t bear to continue like this. Something had to give.

Leah clutched the leather seat of the taxi, holding onto it a like a lifeline, the curious glances the cabbie threw her way doing nothing to propel her out.

She took a deep breath and looked out the dirty window. The marina was busy, a few of the yachts moored there highlighted by the setting sun. But even amidst the loud luxury, one yacht stood out, its gleaming white exterior splendid in the setting sun’s light.

She took the bills out of her gold-lined clutch and handed it over. This was it.

She didn’t let herself think, she didn’t let herself even look around over the next few minutes. Keeping her shoulders straight, head held high, she reached the security personnel guarding the planked entrance. Except for the glimpse of recognition in his gaze, the six-footer didn’t budge a muscle.

Leah raised a brow haughtily, the gesture taking everything she had.

Yes, she had spent the past five years working as an apprentice in a mid-level fashion house, away from the spotlight, locked up in a bubble where no one knew who she was, where no one cared except that she didn’t put a toe out of line.

She slept, she woke up, went to work, went back to her apartment, ate dinner and fell into bed again, while Stavros’s minion, Mrs. Kovlakis, her housekeeper, watched her, made sure she didn’t comit any further scandalous acts. But that didn’t mean anyone had forgotten what she had done, or what Stavros had done to her as punishment.

Especially in this crowd that hung on to every word from Stavros’s lips as if it was the Holy Bible. It felt like an eternity but only a few seconds passed before the man stepped aside. Taking his proffered hand, Leah stepped onto the deck, her guts twisting into a gooey mess.

For a few dazzling minutes, she forgot why she was there as she ventured further. Uniformed waiters passed around champagne. The party was in full swing on the deck, inebriated, sweaty bodies pressing against each other…

Excitement and an electric energy touched the air, and she swayed automatically to the music.

So everything she had heard of Dmitri’s parties was true…and strangely the antithesis of everything Stavros was. So he wouldn’t be here. But she needed to be recognized, which meant she had to grab Dmitri’s attention, especially if he was busy ravishing his latest arm candy.

Smiling for the first time since this afternoon, she walked toward the glittering glass bar that she had read about, planted herself on one barstool, ordered a cosmo and proceeded to get drunk.

Stavros Sporades frowned as his cell phone beeped for the tenth time in the last five minutes. He picked up the phone and smiled at Helene, loath to ruin their private dinner. It was the first time he was relaxing in a month and he guarded his downtime as fiercely as he did his work time.

He picked up his champagne flute and took a sip before clicking Yes.

Dmitri’s drawling tone reverberated in his ears. “She’s here. Aboard my yacht.”

Stavros fell back against the seat in silent shock. Only one woman being aboard Dmitri’s yacht would cause him to call.

Leah.

His blood pumped furiously through his veins. “Are you sure it’s her?”

A mocking laugh met his ears. “It took me a few minutes to recognize her, but yes, it’s her. She’s drunk and dancing.”

Drunk and dancing…

Instead of seeing Leah’s face, he saw his sister Calista, unmoving and pale in death. He had tried so hard to find some kind of closure from Calista’s untimely death, and yet, the anger and the powerlessness were just as raw, just as fresh.

Gritting his jaw, Stavros calmly pocketed his phone. Fury reverberated within, leaving his chest perversely cold. He made his apologies to Helene and exited the rooftop restaurant.

She’s doing very well, Mr. Sporades, Mrs. Kovlakis had said about Leah, in her nasal voice on his weekly phone call. Almost a changed personality, if you can believe.

Had the woman been just telling him what he had wanted to hear?

Within minutes, his pilot landed them on Dmitri’s luxury yacht.

He stepped onto the helipad, a corrosive anger roped with heart-pounding fear running through him. “Where is she?”

His gaze deceptively calm, Dmitri pointed to the dance floor on the lower deck. “I could have had the security personnel grab her, but I think that would have made the situation worse.”

Stavros nodded, unwilling to meet his oldest friend’s eyes.

His control was barely teetering on the edge as it was. He didn’t want to be thankful for the fact that it could have been worse, much worse than Dmitri’s yacht.

He didn’t want to feel grateful that it was just alcohol, not drugs.

Cristos, he didn’t want to set eyes on the woman he had married as punishment and penance.

He didn’t want to set eyes on Leah.

Even in the drunken haze caused by the three cosmos she had consumed, Leah knew the exact moment Stavros had reached the dimly lighted dance floor.

The hairs on her neck shot up, her stomach plummeted. An unbearable cold claimed her skin even though the breeze from the sea was warm. She shook her head slowly to clear the fog and looked up.

The famous, specially commissioned, glittering glass bar that was the prize of Dmitri’s yacht showed a hundred reflections of Stavros. Narrowly sculpted face as if a sculptor had been asked to keep austerity at the front of his mind, the sharp, long bridge of his nose that was arrogance embodied, the cruel slash of his wide mouth that instantly reminded her of that one punishing kiss, and the tawny, long-lashed eyes…

And the hatred blazing in them when he met her gaze in the glass—a hundred flickers of fire that could scorch her in so many ways.

Nausea bubbled through her and Leah stumbled.

Shaking uncontrollably, she wrapped her fingers around the nape of the twenty-something guy she had been dancing with for the last quarter of an hour. Although it was more him holding her boneless body up.

Thankfully, the stranger’s face was blurry to her. She didn’t want to remember anything from this night tomorrow. She moved her feet slowly in rhythm with the beat of hip-hop blaring around them. His hands moved over her hips, hesitated, then moved back up over her back, before embracing her.

Her stomach quivered, the faint whisper of something as mundane as comfort warming her insides.

How pathetic had her life become if the man’s thin body comforted her?

Willing herself to ignore the cloud of black thunder she could sense around her, she dragged in a raspy breath. Softly ominous whispers emerged through the din and music, the sweaty, swaying bodies parting without his uttering a word. It was as if even the air in that lower deck was suspended in the face of the thundering storm.

She pulled herself up and kissed her companion’s smooth, almost boyish jaw and whispered sorry.

It wasn’t the poor guy’s fault that he had no knowledge of who she was or he wouldn’t have dared to touch her. Would have sidled away from her, treating her like a pariah as the rest of the crowd had done once Dmitri had walked by, his gray gaze devouring her with unhurried interest. Once they had all realized she was Leah Huntington Sporades, prisoner and possession of Stavros Sporades, not to be looked at or even spoken to, especially by another man.

Because, Alex, her one friend who hadn’t turned away from her, who had tried to contact her even after Calista’s death and her marriage, had ended up in jail on some trumped-up charges Stavros and that equally arrogant Dmitri had fabricated out of thin air.

The depth of her hatred for Stavros left her shaking uncontrollably.

A steel band wound around her waist and jerked her away from the stranger. Maybe he was even a teenager, she thought, feeling old and tired at just twenty-four.

She fell against a solid, hard frame with a soft thud that knocked the breath out of her.

Unlike the man she had been dancing with, Stavros was all hard, unforgiving muscle that sent her body into shock at the contact.

Long fingers held her arms in a grip this short of hurting and turned her, the heat emanating from his body hitting her like a wave of the sea.

Blinking, Leah raised her gaze and then shied away immediately.

Coward, a voice mocked her inside but she didn’t care.

The soporific effect of the alcohol she had consumed stunting the hatred that buzzed her blood, she went like a doll incapable of independent motion as he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder.

The jutting bones of his shoulders dug into her rib cage, her breasts crushed by his muscular back but Leah refused to let even a whimper emerge.

The world tilted upside down and a tear seeped through despite her efforts. The quiet hush that preceded them was like the calm before the storm…

She had done what she had wanted to do.

She had made a spectacle of herself, she had Stavros’s attention.

Except nothing could numb her to the blistering contempt that had flashed in his gaze in the split second she had looked into it.

She squeezed her eyes shut and gave herself over to the haze in her head.

Leah jerked and breathed in great gulps as ice-cold water drenched her from all sides. She yelped and scooted back on her bum but there was no escape from the chilly spray. Her breath came in quick, short bursts, her lungs struggling to pump it out.

Another hard surface at her back thwarted her attempt at escape and she gave up, shuddering.

Reaching out with her hands, she touched cold marble. Her gaze flew open and she blinked to get the water out. The gold silk plastered to her body offered no protection against the cold. Shivering, she looked around, the chill sinking into her blood, raising goose bumps over her skin.

With shaking hands, she pushed her wet hair out of her face, her mascara running in black rivers down her fingers. So much for waterproof.

Blew out a long breath through her mouth and tried to make sense of her bearings.

She didn’t need to turn to see Stavros standing there, watching her with malicious satisfaction. Could muster not a bit of surprise at what he had done.

Even through every nerve in her flinched at the cold, Leah could still feel his wrath, the heat of his anger. She stretched her arm, still shaking and turned off the glinting silver faucets.

Suddenly, all she wanted to do was curl up in the marble tub and close her eyes. Her body sank into the tub as if her muscles had no rigidness anymore.

“Get out of the tub.” The quiet command landed on her like a slap, jerking her back to the purgatory that waited for her.

And the man who wanted to punish her for the rest of her life.

Even after years, she had no strength to face Stavros, couldn’t face…

No, she wouldn’t feel sorry for herself. Not after all that she had done today to just see him.

Clutching the marble, she pulled herself up to her legs.

Seconds piled on as the shaking in her legs subsided and the luxuriously spacious bathroom stopped swaying in front of her.

Blinking at the glare of light from a crystal chandelier overhead, she took in the dark oak floors and the blue sea outside the window.

Instead of the din, so nerve-racking that she swayed, utter calm reigned.

On shaking legs, she stepped out, dripping water everywhere. Her shoulders shook with the effort it took to keep standing.

A towel came straight at her with a resounding, “Cover yourself.”

She buried her face in the plush cotton, taking the few seconds of privacy it afforded to shore up her defenses. But the contemptuous note in his tone pricked, as if a needle had punctured her skin and drew blood.

Fighting the urge to stay behind the towel, she straightened her spine and threw the towel back. “I’m wearing a dress, thank you. It’s your fault if it reveals more than it covers,” she said, brazening it out.

The plush cotton landed on one arrogant shoulder and she saw those broad shoulders tense. Felt his perusal as if he had laid those big hands on her…

Which was the strangest, scariest thought she had to have ever had.

“I see that you still don’t know what is good for you then, Leah.”

Gathering her wet hair in one hand, she squeezed the water out. Forced an indifference she didn’t feel in the least. Because the reality of her reaction to him was too scary. “More like an allergic reaction to you. I’d rather catch pneumonia and die than be saved by you.”

He reached her suddenly, a wall of fury and contempt that narrowed her very world to him.

Fear and confusion and so many things that she had battled over the last decade deluged her.

The overhead monster lighting illuminated his stark features—a sharper slap to her senses than the ice-cold water, but it was the tawny eyes that knocked the breath out of her.

Calista.

Calista had had those same eyes, except they had been kind, quick to smile, always in search of the next thrill, luring men into her orbit like a spider did with her web.

Her gut twisted into that insidious, painful knot that crept into her when she didn’t make a conscious effort to turn her mind to something else, something other than Calista and that night.

It didn’t help. Nothing did. But amidst the shock of seeing him again, something else penetrated through with an insidious clarity as he neared her.

Set against the severity of his face, the lush lashes and the glittering eyes stood out like an oasis in a desert. Rendering the man impossibly gorgeous, darkly stunning.

His scent was alien, yet alluring.

Leah breathed in a lungful before she could stop, a feverish shiver taking hold of her limbs that had nothing to do with her wet dress.

“Stavros, I—”

Long fingers crawled up her nape into her scalp, tilted her up, while the other hand clasped her jaw loosely.

He studied her every feature with such thorough appraisal that her insides turned into gooey pulp.

No one had even touched her in so long…it had to be why she could feel his touch like a brand on her skin…why such heat was pooling under her skin and rushing to the fore.

Why she wanted to sink into his rough touch more than she wanted to breathe…

Until she realized what he was doing.

He was checking if her pupils were dilated, wondering if she was high.

She stared into his glittering gaze, noted the concrete set of his jaw. Saw a shadow of something in his face that hurled the words past her throat. “I’m not high, Stavros.” It came out as a whisper, an entreaty, and Leah recoiled at that pleading tone.

When he didn’t relent, she grabbed his wrists. Every cell in her rose to attention as the whorls of hair there tickled her palm, as a shot of electricity sparked in the air.

“I remember the last time you said those words…” He sounded as if he was far away, in another place, another time.

Leah jerked his hand away, the heat from his body potent in its draw. Her skin tingled, every muscle in her rearing to get closer to him to soak up that deceptive warmth. She would freeze to death before she sought anything from him. “I’m telling the truth, Stavros.”

I have never touched drugs, she wanted to scream, like she had the night when Calista had died. But he hadn’t even acknowledged her teary words.

His teeth bared in an entirely cold smile. “Ditching your security detail, lying to Mrs. Kovlakis, appearing on Dmitri’s yacht of all places—which is infamous for its wild parties, and knocking back drinks, forgive me if I don’t take your word for it.”

How unfailingly polite he was… He had done that before too, even as he had ruined her life.

You can either marry me or you can go to jail, Leah. The choice is yours.

“It got your attention, didn’t it?” she said, realizing too late she had given herself away. Not that she had meant to keep it a secret.

CHAPTER TWO

“WHAT?”

Stavros loosened his grip on Leah, struggling to get himself under control, struggling to get his neurons to fire again.

Guilt roiled through him, a heavy pulsing weight in his gut, something he had managed to subdue into a dull ache. But one look at Leah was enough to unman him again.

He took a step back as a sharp scent combined with the scent of her skin teased him softly, the cold from her arms clinging to his fingertips.

Frowning, he muttered a curse.

For the first time in his adult life, he lost the razor-sharp concentration that had made him a force to be reckoned with in the business circles of Athens. For several seconds.

“What did you say?”

She glared at him. “You, Stavros. You were the prize in this tacky show. If you had returned a single phone call, if you had read even one of my numerous emails to you… So, of course, I had to lower myself to your standards, didn’t I?”

“My standards?” He was beginning to sound like an idiot and yet, it seemed his brain’s higher functions had fractured.

An ominous thud started somewhere in the regions of his heart. His gaze swept over her with a swift greed he had no chance of curbing. The gold silk dress was almost the color of her skin that had a golden tone that no amount of spray tan could manufacture.

The result was that the dress moved sinuously against those high breasts, dipped at her waist, painting an erotic picture of almost nudity that had knocked him for sixes when he had first spied her at the bar.

Any traces of the curvy, awkwardly brazen girl he had married were gone. Instead, the woman who stood there—the delicate contours of her face rendering her infinitely fragile, her body bordering on scrawny, which made her breasts stand out even more—was a complete stranger.

“This is what you expect of me, isn’t it? So I delivered. And here you are, in front of me, for the first time in five years as if I had conjured you with a spell.”

A spell, as preposterous as it sounded, could be the only thing that could explain how dumbfounded he was.

Her long brown hair was plastered to her scalp and sprayed her face with drops of water when she rubbed it roughly. And every move was touched with an elegant sensuality that, he knew, was more innate than manufactured.

He had handled her so roughly just now, blinded by fury and fear. And any time he felt that unbalanced, his temper took a nasty dive, as his sister used to call it. “You look like… What the hell have you done to yourself?” he said, his control snapping.

She didn’t even flinch, although he saw her lashes flicker down for a second. Her oval face was so thin and fine-boned that her light brown eyes were like dark, murky pools in it. Her arms were thin, too, but at least there was muscle tone to it.

Her hand curving over her hip, her tarty dress clinging to her wet skin, her teeth chattering in her mouth, she thrust one bony hip out in a seductive little moment. “What? You don’t like my utterly fabulous and thin body? Your prison sentence has had at least one perk, Stavros. I lost so much weight that even the models parading through the fashion house keep asking me for tips. I can’t count the number of times Marco has asked me to do a shoot, told me I would be a natural…”

It was the utterly uncaring, blind privilege in her words that broke the haze from Stavros’s eyes. She was manipulating him, working herself under his skin like she always did, and yet he could do nothing to stop her.

From the moment he had laid eyes on her, Leah had been nothing but a spoilt, selfish, pleasure-seeking brat who didn’t know the value of what she had or the people she hurt around her.

So she looked different. It didn’t mean anything except that she had another bow in her arsenal for causing trouble. The first thing he needed to do was to get that…body covered up.

He grabbed her wrist, realized how fragile she was, and loosened his grip. Dragged her with him to Dmitri’s bedroom.

“Wow.” Her unconcerned exclamation boiled his blood anew.

He stilled on the way to the wardrobe, her stretched out body on Dmitri’s vast bed sending the most insane urge to pull her off it.

Cristos, something was wrong with him.

For several seconds, he stared blindly at the rows of neatly arranged Savile Row shirts. Wondered what he was doing in there.

“Dmitri does know how to party and live in style, doesn’t he?”

With a curse, he grabbed a shirt and threw it at her just as she pulled herself up. Her legs, long and toned, with black leather strips from her three-inch sandals winding round and round to her calves, glimmered against the dark red of Dmitri’s sheets.

“Let me get this straight. You dressed like a ten-pound hooker, got drunk and plastered yourself over that boy to get my attention? And it has nothing to do with the fact that a normal, alcohol-and drug-free life was getting to you?”

The shirt he threw came flying back at him, missing him narrowly. He turned and stilled.

The goose bumps on her skin stood out, her eyes huge in her oval face.

“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for a year. If you had the decency to speak to me, I wouldn’t have had to do anything so drastic. It’s the first time I’ve touched alcohol in five years. Not surprisingly, I’m not driven to drink anymore.”

For all his self-discipline over the last few years, he couldn’t stop looking. He couldn’t stop devouring every small bit about her like he couldn’t stop breathing.

Her nipples pebbled against the flimsy dress, her breasts, unsupported by a bra, heaving with her harsh breathing.

She looked like a red-blooded man’s wet dream, and he was in no way impervious to the effect.

No!

This was Leah, a chain of duty and reminder of his failure around his neck. He had absolutely no interest in her except to keep her safe.

With ruthless will that had directed that he marry the woman responsible for his sister’s death, he cut that line of thought.

“Meaning I drove you to drink?” When she remained resolutely mute, he took another clearing breath. He couldn’t get this riled up over her. “Good for you. But I’m sure some habits are harder to kick than others. Like finding a scapegoat to hide your weaknesses behind.”

She flinched. He saw her swallow and turn away.

Hated the vicious satisfaction her pale face gave him. This was why he had avoided seeing her for so long.

With her mere presence, Leah reduced him to a hurtful, raging bastard with no control, ripped off any semblance of closure he deluded himself into achieving.

“I didn’t make a spectacle to discuss my shortcomings with you.” Said in that flippant voice that he had heard so many times.

But her whole body shook with the breath she dragged in. Curved like a bow, her pink mouth looked inviting. Like it was made for mindless kissing.

He studied it with rising fascination, the relentless drag of guilt and anger he felt in her presence dulled by something new, something far more dangerous.

He pushed a hand through his hair, wondering what was getting into him. “You have my attention now, Leah. Tell me, what is that you want?”

“You’ve proved to the whole world what an honorable man you are by marrying the disreputable Katrakis heiress. You’ve kept your word to Giannis. You’ve punished me for five years for my sins and more. Now…please, cut the leash on my life, Stavros.”

Her gaze held steady when he looked up, the fluttering pulse at her neck the only sign of her desperation. She linked her hands in front of her, and for a moment, Stavros couldn’t help but be impressed by her determination to keep a lid on her temper.

It was like watching a volcano trying to contain the lava within.

“Did you think for a second what you did would completely defeat your goal, Leah? How could finding you drunk and plastered over someone persuade me to let you go? Within the month, you will be back to it all, the drugs, the parties. And I can’t let that happen.”

Every drop of blood fled from her face. “You cut me off from the entire world. You cut me off from my friends. You have your goons watch over me night and day. You… And that’s fine too.

“But…you’ve been ignoring my emails, your hateful secretary is forever deflecting me. You…you can’t just take me on as a responsibility and then…just lock me up. I’m not a possession to safeguard. You left me no choice.”

“There are always choices. It’s a pity that with everything you have in the world, you never learned to make the right ones.”

“I’m not interested in discussing the past or the present.” If she did, she would crumple to the floor in a helpless heap. Like she had been for the first couple of months after Calista had died. “All I care about is myself and my future.”

“Of course.” His jaw tightened. “So you have nothing to say to me, nothing to ask?”

She shook her head. “I have a hundred things to organize for my collection. I’m already behind. All I want is a phone call authorizing the release of the…”

He prowled toward her in a slow gait that sent her heart thumping like a bass drum.

“You haven’t seen me, or anyone for five years. Aren’t you even remotely curious, Leah?”

“About what?” she managed to whisper, under the thrall of his mesmerizing gaze.

With a smooth flick of his wrist, he tugged her and she fell into him with a gasp. Every muscle in her body sighed at the contact with his hard one. A little more pressure and he had her locked in his arms with their faces only inches apart. Leaving her with no choice except to look into the anger that turned his eyes into dark gold. “About how your grandfather is doing, you ungrateful little brat.” At her gasp, his hold tightened further, this short of hurting. Sinuous heat burst in her belly and Leah struggled. “Is it too much to hope you would care about the man who took care of you when your father died?”

With a grunt, Leah pushed him back, hating the fact that he had muddled with her head with so little effort. She couldn’t let on how rattled she was by his presence, how out of balance she felt when he touched her, even innocently.

She breathed in roughly, gritting her jaw so tight that she would need to see a dentist soon. There should have been smoke coming out of her ears too. “First of all…I’m not sixteen anymore so stop calling me a brat.

“Secondly, not that I have to explain myself to you, I know how Giannis is doing. I speak to his nurse every day.”

She instantly regretted her words when she saw the disbelief in his gaze.

Turning away from him, she walked to the mini fridge in the corner, needing the time away from his scrutiny to compose herself. Grabbed a bottle and gulped the water down so fast that her throat burned at the chill.

And yet she could feel the heat pooling under her skin as he watched her from the other side of the room, could feel an unnamed charge building up in the room…

This slicing awareness of him, this reaction to his nearness…it was intolerable and utterly frightening. Stavros had only wreaked destruction on her life—why didn’t her body understand that?

“You haven’t visited him once in five years.”

Her chest ached at the thought of seeing Giannis. God, how she wanted to see that kind smile… Even through his heart attack and triple bypass surgery five years ago, Giannis had survived. She wouldn’t risk it by seeing him now.

“My relationship with Giannis is none of your business.”

His mouth stretched into a smile, the straight upper lip losing its severity in the process. “I’m making it mine.”

“And I’m saying ‘No more.’ I have spent five years living a life you dictated, Stavros, down to the food I ate, the clothes I wore, the people I spoke to. Whatever you think needed fixing in me, it is fixed now. I want to lead my life, I want to build a career…” Frustration filled her throat with tears. “What more do you need to be convinced that I can lead my own life?”

“Not getting a phone call from Dmitri that you are drunk and plastered over some boy would have been a start.”

“I told you why I did that. If I hadn’t, you would have gone another decade without answering my phone calls.” She hated that her every action was being driven by him. That even in her own mind, she had no freedom. And it could not continue.

“I have spoken to a friend of mine. Philip is a lawyer.” She stepped back from him, willing herself to stay strong. “I’m aware of my rights, Stavros. There are a hundred different reasons that could be cited and accepted by the court for a divorce.”

“A divorce?”

“Yes. I want a divorce. I want to never see you again. And I’m sure the thought of being rid of me forever fills you with happiness. So give us both what we want.”

A small smile touched his mouth but didn’t reach that compelling gaze. Again, Leah had a feeling that it hid so much she didn’t know. “You have rights and lawyers. But it could take years if I didn’t agree, Leah. We could be celebrating a ten-year anniversary before we even get through the preliminaries.”

“Is this what I have become for you?” Leah grabbed the edge of the desk to hide the trembling of her hands, a scream building away in her chest.

Hot tears prickled behind her eyelids. “Someone to punch, something to punish eternally so that you can feel better about what happened to Calista? Believe me, I wish it had been me that ended up dead that night and not her. But you know what? Wishing doesn’t make anything come true.”

Because even though she had never touched drugs in her life, she had enabled Calista that night. And that guilt choked her.

For the first time that evening, or maybe in forever, he looked so shocked that Leah would have celebrated it as a victory if not for the gnawing in her gut.

Slowly, he recovered, those long lashes hiding his expression. “I have never wished that you had died instead that night, Leah.”

She didn’t want to believe him. But Stavros was never less than honest.

Of course he wouldn’t have wished Giannis Katrakis’s granddaughter’s death. His control, not only over his actions, but even his very thoughts had always disconcerted and fascinated her in equal measure.

He lived by such a stringent code of his own rules, and applied it to everyone around him that no one could really hold up to it.

Not Dmitri, not Calista and definitely not her.

Recovering from the memory, she shook her head. “Right. You didn’t wish my death because who else will you take out your sadistic side on if I were gone?”

“You call the last decade of your presence in my life sadism. I call it masochism.”

She knew, had always known, what he thought of her. But hearing it in his own words… Her fingers pressed into the glass in her hand, the urge to throw the glass, water and all, at his head bubbling up inside her.

His amused gaze followed her shaky movements. “Try it.”

The utter satisfaction in his voice got through to her like nothing else could.

He expected this of her. He expected a juvenile tantrum and she had already catered to him today and for years. Every time he had warned her to not do something, she had done that and more. Had lashed out against him from the moment she had landed in Greece.

Hating Stavros, especially when he had continuously given her ample reasons, had been easier than dealing with the grief and fear inside her.

No more, Leah.

There was power in that choice, power in saying she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of being right about her anymore.

Instead, she took a deep breath, reminded herself why she was here. It would be great if Stavros released those funds to her. But she had known it wouldn’t be that simple.

Any other man would have sent the woman he thought responsible for his sister’s death to the other end of the world.

Instead, hours after he had buried Calista, he had bound her to him in the most sacred of bonds.

She didn’t even care about the divorce. The mockery of her marriage had never meant anything to her. All she wanted was to succeed, to give her life meaning, to take the joy she had always found in designing and creating to the next step.

“What do I have to do that you will release those funds?”

“Will you do anything I ask of you?”

Something in the silky tone of his voice—a flicker of interest maybe, nudged her into panic zone again. “My personal life is my own. Even with the shackles you bound me with, I have friends who mean something to me. If you order me to cut ties with them, I won’t.

“Last time you cut off my friends from me and gained control over my life, I was…I was too…”

“Too high to even notice what was going on around you?”

She hadn’t even gone on the anti-anxiety medication that had been prescribed after her dad’s death, hadn’t wanted to numb the grief of his death.

But it was pointless to defend herself when he had already passed judgment.

“I know how much you resented my responsibility from the moment I stepped off that plane. It doesn’t have to be like that anymore.”

Walking around the desk, he reached her side, and Leah fought the automatic impulse to step back, to keep some distance between them.

With his Greek-god good looks and smoldering arrogance, Stavros had always made her feel like the proverbial ugly duckling, made her feel even more awkward than she already had, surrounded by her grandfather’s high-class society friends.

It seemed like a thoroughly unwelcome awareness took the place of her anxiety now. The faint stubble on his tight cheeks, the perfectly etched curve of his mouth…

The collar of his dress shirt was open, showing his olive skin. Holding her breath in, she pulled her gaze to his.

Every nerve in her body thrummed as he neared her. At thirty-three, he was a decade older than her. So why couldn’t he have grown a paunch and become bald? Couldn’t fate or whatever it was up above give her a break at least in this?

Couldn’t he have been a little less gorgeous?

“If you have waited five years, what’s three more months for a divorce? Or is this Philip more than just a lawyer?”

“Philip is only a friend. And if you want to continue satisfying your twisted sense of duty…fine.”

Stavros watched in rising fascination as she closed her eyes and pulled in a long breath.

Shame filled him as he took in her slender frame. He hadn’t seen her once in five years. He hadn’t even made a call. Had just left her to Mrs. Kovlakis’s care.

It had been unbearable to even look at her after Calista’s death.

Theos, he had been so angry with her…

He had granted her request to apprentice at the fashion house, and yet, he hadn’t really done his duty, had he? Marrying her to protect her from fortune hunters that had always surrounded her like vultures, to protect her from her own reckless lifestyle, as he had promised Giannis, had only been the first step.

He had let grief and anger distract him. It had been easy to forget about her, easier even to tolerate her presence in his life from a distance.

A possession to safeguard?

She was right—it had gone on too long. He had resented his future with her for long enough.

“I’ve learned all I could at the fashion house. I have made some good contacts, and I would like to leave it now.”

Tension swathed him as she interrupted his thoughts. He should never have left her alone for so long, shouldn’t have given her this chance to go on the offensive.

“Leave and go where?”

“Ideally, I would love to go to New York City. But it—”

“New York and your inheritance—I can see where this is going.”

“—will be like starting all over,” she continued, glaring at him. “I have made some good contacts here—buyers at retail stores, models who like what I have come up with so far. So I decided against it. But I do need to take the next step now. The fashion industry moves so fast that waiting until the few people that like my designs forget me will harm any future I have in it.”

“What is the next step?”

Sudden energy filled her eyes. “I’m going to take a chance and start freelancing, do custom orders for now. Right now, I have interest from a woman who buys for a small retail store in London.”

“Going out on your own, especially in your field, is a risky venture. Shouldn’t you continue at the fashion house?”

“I have been making clothes all my life, Stavros. I have worked there for seven years and except for being allowed to give input on a senior designer’s creations, I don’t have any growth there.”

“But you don’t know anything about running a business.”

“You grew up on some itty-bitty farm and Dmitri…what was he…a drug runner or a pimp? I forget… The point is both of you knew less than squat when Giannis brought you here.”

He continued staring at her, his silence wreaking havoc on her breathing.

“I need to take this shot. And I need money up front for all the costs. I can’t access my trust fund unless you stop controlling it, unless you step down from your role as…”

“Ahhh…” He smirked and Leah wished she could get away with slapping the hateful man. But one wrong breath now and he would never listen to her again.

“That’s what this is all about. Money.”

“Yes, money,” she added, mimicking his sarcastic tone. Easy for him to look down upon her when he had gazillions of it. “Money that my father left me and has nothing to do with you or Giannis or my mother or the bloody Katrakis dynasty’s inheritance.”

“Fine.”

Was that it? So easy? Leah let out a long breath. Excitement fizzed through her. She would call her contact at the textile factory as soon as she got out. She would have to finalize and place orders for the raw materials, would have to hire someone to help with the sewing, would have to order equipment…

“Show me a proposal for this alleged business you want to start. If I find it sound,” he said, stressing how improbable he found the very idea, “I will invest in it myself.”

Anger and hurt ripped through Leah, leaving her trembling all over. Her chest was so tight that it was a miracle she could breathe.

She wanted to smash the expensive porcelain vase on the side table next to her, she wanted to let the scream building away in her chest loose, she wanted to…

“I don’t want your investment. I don’t want anything from you. I want my money. I want this…my career—I need this to be about me, Stavros, something I love doing, something I can take on without fear. Something I give all of myself to.”

“I should have made my intentions clearer to you far sooner. You were right, I shouldn’t have let it go on for so long. But now that you are here, I will correct the situation immediately.”

Her heart lurched into her throat, cutting off Leah’s breath. Whatever it was that he meant, it wasn’t going to be remotely what she wanted. “What do you mean?”

“When I gave my word to Giannis that I would protect you, even from yourself, I didn’t mean it temporarily, Leah. I meant the until death do us part. Whatever way that death might come for you. So let’s get two things straight.”

He looked like someone had carved his features in stone, removed every ounce of emotion from it. “This lawyer friend of yours… he should know better than to tangle with my wife.

“Secondly, you’ll move in with me.”

“What? Why?”

“Because it’s high time we started our life together.

“And as for your career, we will get a fashion house, London or Milan or Paris, whatever you choose, to launch a line for you. As my wife, you will lack for nothing.”

CHAPTER THREE

LAUNCH A LINE from a top design house in the world? Lack for nothing as his wife?

His wife?

He had to be joking; he had always liked making her miserable!

You cannot see that boy anymore, Leah…

No more trips to New York…

Giannis allows you far too much financial freedom but not anymore…

Leah met his gaze and everything within her stilled.

Stavros Sporades didn’t give his word or make a promise easily. When he did…

Fear struck her so hard that her knees shuddered under her.

He instantly moved forward to catch her but Leah jerked away from him. “Don’t come near me,” she whispered.

She grabbed the door to stop from sliding to the floor in a puddle. She wanted to scream her denial but what left her mouth was a soft gasp.

He would never forgive her, or himself, for Calista’s death, never even give her a chance. Would punish them both for the rest of their lives.

And to even contemplate being his wife in the true sense of the word…

Perversely, she felt a chilly calm inside instead of a boiling rage. “When I decided to come here today, I didn’t even care about whether I was married to you or not. I didn’t care about being so lonely all these years…friends I knew once living their life to the fullest… I lived it as if I deserved to be punished. But now…I won’t quietly accept your word this time.

“I’m going to file for divorce, Stavros.”

A tic played in his jaw, the only thing that betrayed his even gaze. He looked insurmountable, like a boulder intent on crushing her. “Lawyers and court proceedings cost money.”

That patronizing tone set her teeth on edge. “I will sell myself if I have to, to pay for it. Within the week, I will move out of that flat, will be handing in my resignation at the fashion house. The moment I step out of here, I’m going to call Philip and tell him what I plan to do.”

He moved to block her path, his gait predatory. “I’m not your enemy, Leah.”

Panic pushed a hundred different flight routes in her head, one more desperate than the next. “No? Because God help me the day you decide that you are. If your goons even lay a finger on me, I will go to the media and start talking about how you have treated me over the last five years. I’ll tell them I’ve been nothing but a glorified prisoner.

“I’m sure they would love to hear that saintly Stavros Sporades is nothing but a sadist.”

“I do not care what the media calls me.”

Nausea pooled in her mouth. “They will, of course, dig through the whole story again about that night and Calista.”

If there was fury before in his eyes, now there was nothing but the bitterest loathing for her. And seeing as she felt the same inside, that she despised herself for how far she was taking this, his loathing couldn’t touch Leah.

For once, his opinion of her couldn’t hurt her, as twisted as it was.

“If he even hears a whiff of it—” a vein throbbed in his temple and his hands fisted at his side “—Giannis, who…has done nothing but love you, he will be destroyed to see the Katrakis name dragged through mud. You will kill him with your stupid stunt, and my grandparents…they can’t bear to think of Calista’s death anymore.”

“But you already know that I don’t care about anyone but myself, don’t you?” she bluffed, swallowing the bile that rose through her.

She couldn’t betray the depth of pain that she held at bay every day thinking of her grandfather, of knowing he was close by but not seeing him.

Guilt ate through her insides. But she had no recourse except to threaten Stavros like this. She forced a smile, her cheeks hurting at her continued pretense. “If you don’t want me to drag the Sporades name and the Katrakis name through mud, you will have to agree.”

She opened the door and looked at him again, feeling truly afraid for the first time. She had gambled on the one person that she loved with all her heart. She could never hurt her grandfather. Even speaking about it like this was cutting her in two. But she had to make sure Stavros would believe her capable of it. “You will have to release those funds and you have to cut the strings you hold over my life. The choice is yours, Stavros.”

“I thought I knew the depths of selfishness you could sink to, but you always manage to surprise me, Leah.”

Desolation filled her at the utter resignation in his voice. That he believed her bluff didn’t fill her with relief or gratitude however. Only painted a picture of what her life would be like with him.

And thinking of being caught in a circle of hatred and hero worship, she didn’t have to try to sound like she didn’t care. “What’s new about that, Stavros? And who knows? Once I’m out of your life, you might even thank me for it.”

Without stopping for even a breath, she rushed out of the bedroom and through the corridors, her legs barely holding her up.

She made it to the main deck before she collapsed onto the floor and clutched her knees. Leaning her head against her knees, she fought to corral her uneven breathing.

The very real possibility of Stavros still not believing what she had threatened sent a shaft of fear through her.

Her nape prickled as she heard someone approach, and instantly, she straightened her shoulders. She couldn’t afford to let him see her like this… He would know that she had been bluffing. And she would be worse off than she had started today.

Breathing hard, she composed herself and looked up.

His hip lolling against the bar counter in casual elegance, Dmitri watched her with gray eyes. “Hello, Leah.”

Shuddering, Leah swallowed the hard knot in her throat.

She couldn’t break down now, not when Stavros was so close.

A daring mockery in his gaze, Dmitri extended a hand to pull her up.

Leah grabbed his hand and pushed herself to her feet.

His hands were callous but didn’t leave her shaking like Stavros’s grip had done. His mocking gaze didn’t compel her to react nor did his arrogant perusal leave her off balance and breathless. She didn’t feel compelled to be better than she was, or to give up in frustration because nothing would ever change, as she did with Stavros.

She didn’t feel anything except questionable warmth at seeing a familiar face.

Why Stavros of all men? Was she that much of a sucker for pain?

“I can see that you’re—” Dmitri’s gaze swept over her “—looking astonishingly well, so I’m not going to ask how you have been.”

Set against Stavros’s lacerating contempt, there was a slumbering, almost comforting quality to Dmitri that had always put her at ease. Looking into the bottomless depths of Dmitri’s eyes now, she wondered how much of that warmth was a deceptive facade.

“Come, I’ll take you home. Stavros will thank me for stopping his precious wife from getting arrested for indecent exposure.”

Leah shivered, only barely stopping herself from covering her chest with her arms. Hearing herself referred to as Stavros’s wife, even the mention of that bond that tied them together made her queasy inside, and Dmitri knew it.

Straightening her shoulders and resolutely holding her arms down, she glared at him. “Then he shouldn’t have dumped me in that monstrous tub of yours.”

His laughter swathed her. Leah ducked, just enough when he threw an arm to pull her to him.

“I’m not playing your games, Dmitri, so back off.”

His eyes warmed up even more. The few times she had come into contact with him, he had at least had a kind smile for her, whether real or fake.

Familiar trust awoke in her, something inside her desperate for a friend after Stavros’s stinging scorn.

Unless it was part of his game to get her to trust him and pump her for information so that he could take it back to Stavros… She sighed, feeling immensely tired and lonely.

“I have missed your sharp tongue all these years.”

“Wish I could say the same, but I don’t have your gift or charm for lying.”

Reaching her, he hooked her arm through his and herded her toward the steps. “Let’s not pretend about your talents. At least not with me.”

Swallowing her fear, Leah dragged her feet. Dmitri saw far more than he let on. As different as they were, his friendship with Stavros was as inviolate as their devotion toward Giannis.

Donning that mask of reckless ignorance, Leah faced him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about but I can find my own way, thank you.”

“I heard your conversation, Leah.”

“Then you’re as uncivilized as they say.”

He stared at her with unblinking eyes. “I had the yacht empty in five minutes but I couldn’t leave. I was afraid of what you both would do to each other,” he drawled silkily.

Every time she had seen Giannis with either Dmitri or Stavros, she had felt a yawning chasm in her chest knowing she could never share something like that with her own grandfather. And that it was her choice.

“It doesn’t concern you, Dmitri.”

Grabbing her arm, he turned her. “You’re playing a dangerous game with Giannis’s life, Leah. This is not like one of those antics you used to take up just to make Stavros furious.”

That he had always seen through her ploys unnerved Leah. “All I want is my freedom, Dmitri, a chance to live my life. You get that, don’t you?” she threw back at him, remembering bits and pieces of what Calista had told her about Dmitri’s life before Giannis had plucked him off the streets of London.

“Try a different way then. For once, try to change the dynamic between you two, Leah.”

“How?” she whispered, her voice breaking. “He’s left me no choice. In that moment—” she pointed to the ominously quiet lower deck, her heart pounding in her chest “—it started as a bluff. But I… I don’t know what I’m capable of anymore.”

“Stavros and you are intent on destroying each other.”

“Me destroy Stavros? All the power, all the cards are in his hands, Dmitri. As always.” And the worst part was that she had given it all to him with her irresponsible behavior.

All she had today was the wretched power to hurt Giannis. And Leah was terrified that she would use that power. Desperation turned her words into a pitiful entreaty.

“If you count Stavros as your friend, if you really care about Giannis’s well-being, then convince Stavros that I don’t need his brand of protection anymore. Please, Dmitri.”

Two days later, Stavros and Dmitri were sparring in the ring in the ultra-sophisticated, custom-built gym attached to Dmitri’s Athens apartment.

It had started when Stavros had suggested Dmitri could work his way out of a temper instead of losing it when Giannis had brought him to Athens years ago, morphed into a way for them to resolve arguments when they struggled to keep up with the rigorous, grueling schedule that Giannis set for them.

A habit they had carried into adulthood.

But today, Stavros was the one who felt bloodthirsty, like he was coming apart at the seams.

After two days in which he had been supremely unproductive, he still hadn’t been able to master his reaction to seeing Leah.

You already know that I don’t care about anyone but myself, don’t you?

Her words rang through him, her glittering gaze and her vibrating body etched into his brain.

The brazen curve of her mouth, the reckless shrug with one hand on a bony hip, her dark brown hair drying in curls around that angelic face… Cristo, he still couldn’t believe that…boldly stunning creature had been Leah.

Leah, who had jumped like a live wire when he had touched her without meaning to…

Leah, who, even at a naive sixteen, had somehow always pushed all the wrong buttons in him…

Leah, who was, even now, insidiously unfurling the iron fist with which he ruled his…

No!

Moving his right foot forward, Stavros swung his left hook with a vicious fury. The thwack of his knuckle against Dmitri’s jaw, and the hiss of his exhale, followed by the filthiest curse words reverberated in the quiet.

Shock flashed in Dmitri’s eyes.

That Stavros had gone on the offense when it had always been about letting Dmitri work through one of his tempers, who learned to use his fists on the streets of London amidst gangs, spoke to his ragged control.

“Ding, ding,” Dmitri mocked, dark amusement in his gaze. “Point for Leah Huntington Sporades.”

Gritting his jaw, Stavros shot him a filthy look.

Massaging his jaw with one hand, Dmitri reached for a bottle of water with the other. “In all the years that we have known each other, you have never gone on the offensive. Today’s win has to go to her.”

Knowing how cunningly perceptive Dmitri was, Stavros decided to leave. It had been a miracle in itself that Dmitri had—showing what Giannis would have called uncharacteristic wisdom—left Stavros alone after Leah’s latest stunt.

He didn’t want to discuss Leah, with him of all people.

Dmitri’s jaw was already black and blue, and for once, Stavros enjoyed the result of his loss of control. “Put some ice on it.”

Dmitri stopped him with a hand on his arm. “You’re pushing it too far, Stavros.”

“Leave it alone, Dmitri.” He knew exactly what his friend was talking about.

Moving around him, Dmitri blocked his path. “You went above and beyond what Giannis asked of you. Wash your hands off.”

Giannis, to whom he and Dmitri owed their entire world, had asked for only one thing in return after becoming their salvation when they had been nothing but uneducated thugs.

And Stavros had failed spectacularly at it. “Have you forgiven yourself for everything you have ever done? Or failed to do?”

All emotion seeped out of Dmitri’s face, leaving an uncaring mask in its place. “Do I look like I have been punishing myself for the last decade?”

Stavros made a doubtful sound of assent in his throat. “See you next week.”

“Giannis asked you to protect her, Stavros, ne?” His breath hung in his throat as Stavros waited. “But what I saw two days ago… He should have entrusted me with Leah. I would have seduced her within the day, made her fall in love with me and then cast her aside after a week. She would have learned her lesson.

“But you—”

Stavros curled his hand around his friend’s throat, fury filling every vein. The thought of Dmitri seducing and throwing away Leah made him crazy like a rabid dog he had once put down as a teenager. “She is not one of your party bunnies, Dmitri. She’s…she’s Leah.”

His breathing loud to his own ears, Stavros stilled. Dmitri watched him with hooded eyes, not even trying to shake off his grip. They both knew what he had been about to say.

She is my wife.

When had he become so possessive of Leah? When had she gone from a chain around his neck to something that could incite him like this?

“To see Stavros Sporades’s ironclad control unravel like this… But even a man made of stone would have noticed that gorgeous body. Leah could always get under your skin so easily,” Dmitri continued, frowning, “but now, she has another weapon to wield against you.”

“Enough, Dmitri! I don’t interfere in your life nor pass judgment on it.”

“But Leah is not just any woman. If you’re doing this just because you suddenly have the hots for your little wife—”

“Some days, I don’t know whether to call you friend or foe.”

Dmitri didn’t even blink. “You are the most honorable man I know, Stavros. Until I met you, I didn’t know what it was. There are days when I still don’t. But Leah’s threat concerns Giannis. You need to make a decision soon.”

“I already made one. Five years ago.”

“Then why have you left her under someone else’s care, kept her at a distance? Either she’s truly your wife or you’re through with her.

“You can’t hang both your lives in limbo as if it was some sort of penance.”

A chill seeped into his skin despite the fact that he was sweating. Stavros let Dmitri go. “What if she hasn’t changed? What if she…”

“Give her a chance at least, Stavros. To prove you right or wrong.”

It was Dmitri that finally left the room.

Everything Dmitri had said was stuff he had already been over a thousand times.

The moment Dmitri had called him, guilt had clung to Stavros.

All his life, he had tried to do his duty by his grandparents, by Calista, by Giannis. He hadn’t let his own fears or wants matter. He had always done the right thing. He knew what he had to do now, knew Leah deserved a chance. And yet, he wavered, for the first time in his life.

Never had his mind or body been so out of sync as it was now.

Five years ago, he had let his anger detract him, and now the intensity of his want for her was a weakness he had never had to deal with before. He wiped his face and looked at himself in the mirror.

He had let nothing but his responsibilities, his sense of duty, guide him his entire life.

Nothing was going to change that, not his reckless, selfish, brazen wife of all people in the world.

CHAPTER FOUR

STANDING AT THE small balcony that offered a view of the colorful Athens evening ahead, Leah looked out.

She had been running for the past hour, the one thing that had always grounded her. Yet, all she felt like was running away, and this time, not looking back.

The panic-fueled urge was like an itch under her skin, a fire in her nerves.

It was a quarter past five and already the cafes and eateries were filling up with locals and tourists alike. Laughter and excited phrases in Greek swirled up through the air. It was a sight that had brought her a smile countless number of times after another long, lonely day. Today, it couldn’t dispel her anxiety even a little bit.

Sighing, she went back inside. The pristine white walls that she had refused to adorn with even a single photo closed in on her and she started pacing.

Why hadn’t she run away before now? Why hadn’t she walked away from Stavros and this…pitiful thing between them that was a marriage, and not looked back?

Had she been so lonely to cling to this familiar world even knowing that she could never be close to her grandfather in the way it mattered? Had even Stavros’s punishment been better than facing a life alone in the world?

She would never forgive herself for the part she had played in it, but, to this day, she had no idea that Calista had been using. Had no idea that hiding Calista’s involvement in everything Stavros had abhorred about Leah would go that far.

Had no idea what it was about Stavros that made the worst parts of her manifest so well.

Impulse and fear making her movements jerky, she reached her closet and pulled out a shoulder bag that had collected dust from sitting unused for so long. Grabbed a few clothes and threw them in the bag.

For two days, she had waited calmly, taking Philip’s advice to not do anything rash. Had waited for the explosion from Stavros to come. Had barely slept a wink, was driving herself crazy.

She couldn’t wait to see if Stavros would take her bait. She would have to cut her ties, beginning with this flat and her job.

Just as she grabbed her phone, it pinged and the name Stavros popped up on her screen.

Leah dropped it with a gasp, her heart jamming in her throat. Perspiration condensed on her forehead as she stared down at the phone on the dull carpet.

It pinged again, jolting her out of her haze. She swiped it open to the text.

Come down to the café in ten minutes. I have an offer for you.

An offer? Could she trust him? Had she finally got through to him?

Will scream if I see your ‘security guys.’

She waited, her breath hanging in her throat.

Enough drama, Leah. Come down or I come upstairs.

The thought of Stavros invading her private space, as much of a jail as it was, sent her fingers flying over the phone.

Fine, see you in a bit.

Feeling more hopeful than she’d been in months, she was about to step into the shower when it pinged again.

Leah…Dress appropriately.

Leaning against the bathroom wall, she made an utterly juvenile face at the phone. The small space thundered with the boom of her heart.

Stavros was here because he had bought her bluff. It wouldn’t do to let on how petrified she was inside, to let him set the tone for this conversation.

It was like a mask she had to wear and the more she did it, the more it felt like she would become that uncaring, selfish person that he had always despised.

He had said ten minutes.

By the time he spied her crossing the street from her building to the café, it was well over half an hour. In true Leah form, she had also blatantly disregarded his last text.

The peach-colored silk blouse pressed against her body, neatly delineating the globes of her high breasts as a gust of wind blew across the street. He saw her shiver and grab the edges of the long-sleeved cardigan together.

Heat uncoiled under his own skin, a soft, sinuous gathering of something molten.

The silk blouse was paired with an even more flimsy pair of shorts that showcased her long legs. The glint of a toned thigh muscle, the way her wavy brown hair swept into a high ponytail swung with her long-limbed stride as she walked toward the café in her knee-high leather boots turned more than one male head.

She walked with the innate grace of an athlete, confident in her own skin. There was nothing of the Leah he had married and not because she had grown into her beauty. It was like a fire burned within, one that made her something to behold.

Was it truly as she had claimed and about her career? Or was it a man? Every cell in him went on high alert at the thought.

The last man Leah had been close with had been a crook of the first order—Alex Ralston, who was in jail even now for possession and distribution of drugs.

“When will you learn that defying me only wrecks your own life, Leah?” he said, dragging her down to the seat next to him.

Crossing her legs in a languorous gesture, she curved her pink-glossed mouth in a too sweet smile. “When will you learn that you cannot order me around, Stavros?”

As silky soft as her skin had been to the touch, her pulse had been pounding a thousand beats a minute. She was nervous. And yet, she was doing everything she could to not let him see it.

He waved away the waiter that arrived at their table with a beaming smile for her.

She waved him back with a friendly smile. When he glared at her, she sighed.

“I am hungry, Stavros. I rarely, if ever, eat out so I’m going to pretend you enjoy my company and make the most of it.”

He waited in silence as the young waiter appeared again. Watched in mounting fascination as she ordered three appetizers and two entrees in fractured but perfectly accurate Greek.

“I’m not eating,” he said dismissively as the waiter left.

“I know. It’s Friday evening and you’ll have dinner with Helene Petrou, ex-lover and—” a curse flew from his mouth “—current friend.”

Leaning forward in an elegant move, he pinned her gaze. “How do you know about that?”

“Philip has his resources.”

“So your little lawyer asked you to casually throw that into the conversation?”

“Actually, quite the opposite. He told me not to even betray the fact that I knew anything about her,” she said with that blunt and reckless honesty.

Stavros settled back slowly.

Leah had zero self-preservation. How was he supposed to believe that she could look after herself?

“Then why did you?”

“I don’t want to wage a war against you, Stavros. It’s… my last choice. I bring it up because I was…shocked to hear her name after so many years. That you see her apparently on a weekly basis.”

“Shocked to learn that I keep in touch with a woman I admire?” he said, choosing his words carefully.

Looking anywhere but at him, she nodded. The fine sheen of color in her cheeks snagged his attention.

Brazen, reckless Leah was uncomfortable?

“I remembered that Calista…she talked so much about you guys. That you were made for each other,” she said, her gaze wandering off into the distance.

The look in her eyes was a compelling blend of pain and ache that Stavros had never seen before. Did she truly mourn Calista that much? “Leah?”

She blinked and then curved her mouth. But the artifice of the action wasn’t lost to him. “You would be free. To be with her.”

“You want me to be with Helene?” he said, shocked.

“Yes.” She took a sip of water, her gaze lingering on him. “Of course, I would prefer it if you were as miserable as you’ve always made me, but if your happiness is the price of my freedom…then so be it.”

“That’s very magnanimous of you, Leah.” The whole conversation was twistedly perverse. “I’m surprised you remember her. Or anything from that time.”

His dig bounced off her. “Her resume is far too impressive to forget. Businesswoman, fashion icon, former model and the best of all, the one who could stand up to Stavros Sporades’s infinitely impeccable standards for a woman.”

He stared at the almost cynical twist of her mouth, something in her tone grating at him. “You have quite the opinion about her.”

“Of course, I do. I was obsessed with…” Coloring, she trailed her gaze away from him. “How successful she was at such a young age.”

He had a curious feeling that it wasn’t what she meant to say. If he compartmentalized his abhorrence for everything Leah represented and his unwise awareness of her every move, he could admit that Leah was funny and resilient as hell.

The more he pondered that, the more he realized how true it was.

Despite losing her father suddenly in a car accident and being thrust into an unfamiliar world that Giannis and he lived in, he had never seen her morose or down.

That same selfishness that he abhorred also lent her a strange strength. It was as if she stood behind a veil that separated her emotions, her very self from the people around her.

“So was all that food to please the waiter?”

“Where are your manners, Stavros?”

“All my finer qualities disappear like a mist when it comes to you, Leah.”

“I was running this afternoon. So all that food is for me.”

Stavros nodded, understanding the toned litheness of her body. “What happened to walking out the flat and the job? To letting your little lawyer loose on me?”

He saw her still for a second before she turned toward him. “I… Philip advised me to not do anything rash.”

“And you listened.” Which meant she trusted him, which meant Stavros needed to know everything about him.

The waiter brought the food and she grabbed a fork. A satisfied sound erupted from her mouth, drawing the gaze and attention of more than one man sitting at the neighboring tables.

She looked up from her food suddenly and blushed. “So what is your offer?”

“I’m proposing a compromise.”

“Nothing you ever suggest is a compromise. It will be your will, only couched in deceptive words. You did the same thing to…”

At the sudden glint in his gaze, Leah fiddled with the fork and looked away.

“To whom?”

Her shrimp suddenly tasted like sawdust in her mouth. Leah swallowed it down with a sip of her water. “To me and Calista, of course, countless times. Anything she proposed, you forbade it.”

Like the time when she had wanted to study art in Paris one year, and when she had wanted to travel to New York with Leah. Like the time when Calista had wanted to start bartending at a nightclub where her friend had worked.

And when he refused her, one of Calista’s rages would begin. Just the memory rattled Leah on a deep level. Calista had had a temper but she had hidden it so thoroughly from her brother.

“For instance?” he added softly, and Leah blinked. “You looked so pained just now, tell me what you were thinking, Leah.”

The inherent command rankled Leah, and yet, beneath it, she sensed his eagerness, his curiosity. That there could be more to Stavros than rules and duty…it threw her.

He had only been in his twenties when she had arrived in Athens, and yet, all she remembered about Stavros was his incredible sense of responsibility and duty toward all of them.

For the first time, she wondered what drove him to it.

Her curiosity tempered her response. “Why do you want to know?”

He blinked now, as if he couldn’t believe that she dared question him. No, it wasn’t that. Dumbfounded, she watched as he struggled to put his thoughts into words. “I… Even though I gave her everything she could ever want, I never understood—” something in her loosened as he visibly swallowed “—why Calista chose to follow your lead, how I failed to protect her.”

The anguish in his gaze sent memories and impressions hurtling through Leah. Her shoulders shook. “I don’t know—”

“Not that I expect you to know the answer, when you’re the one who led her to drugs.”

Her head jerked up.

Arrogant implacability wreathed his features. As if he had realized who he was talking to. As if there could be nothing but contempt between them.

“No, of course not,” she whispered, buffeting herself against the immense hurt his words caused. Leah put her fork down.

Despite all her grand plans and ideas for adventures, Calista had never even lifted a finger in the house. Whereas Leah, whose mother had died giving birth to her, had always done more than her share to help out her dad even from a young age.

My saintly brother has servants for that… It had been her favorite thing to say when Leah would suggest cleaning up or cooking sometimes.

She had been sixteen and afraid and grieving in her own way. How much of her understanding of Calista would hold up today? For a minute, it seemed she and Stavros had found something common in their grief over Calista.

But no, the past was done. She had to look forward to the future.

Collecting herself, Leah looked up at him. “Tell me what I have to do.”

He studied her for the longest time. Each falling second twisted her gut. “Live with me for three months and prove that I can trust you.”

“No.” The table rattled with the force of her movement.

“This is the only way I will even consider it.”

“What do you expect me to do these three months?”

“Convince me that you’re serious about this fashion design career, that you won’t drain your inheritance on some trumped-up business.”

“The vote of confidence in your tone is really inspiring.”

That hardness in his eyes didn’t budge. “I’m giving you a real choice. If you fail, our marriage stands. You’ll be my wife in every sense for as long as one of us is alive.”

A violent tremble started at the base of her spine and spread upward and outward. The happy voices around her buzzed as if they were noise feedback. And in that space between them, a charge built up winding and changing with every breath they took.

Leah struggled against it, rationalized against it. He met his lover every week. He could not be attracted to her. Nor she to him.

This charge was antagonism that had gone unaddressed for so many years, hatred and resentment and their struggle against this very fate that was spilling over into something else. Maybe it would be true if she believed it enough, she thought desperately.

Because thinking of Stavros in this way—when even her juvenile crush on him had always left her feeling inadequate, was the last thing she needed in life.

Through sheer will, she forced herself to break his gaze, to focus on the fact that he was giving her a real chance. That Giannis would be far removed from their deal was positive.

“If I do prove that I’m everything that is virtuous and sweet and biddable and completely without personality?” His scowl deepened and since needling Stavros was the only thing she had control over in the sinking confusion of her world, she continued, “I’m just a little bit worried that you might not want to give me up then.”

His laughter clanged in the open café. It was a sound Leah had so rarely heard that she stared at him, her breath caught somewhere in her throat.

That lean chest rumbled as if he couldn’t contain it. From the long column of his throat to the sharp grooves in his sliced cheeks…he was gorgeous to behold.

It seemed the café froze around them to take in the sight.

A woman at the next table stilled with her coffee cup halfway to her mouth, her gaze eating him up. Still laughing, he pushed back the thick lock of jet-black hair that fell onto his forehead.

And the solid gold band on his finger glinted in the streetlight.

The twinkle of the metal struck Leah in the chest as if it were an arrow.

The wedding band… He was wearing his wedding band?

The ring she had slipped onto his finger while tears had pooled in her eyes. The ring that had bound her to him in the holiest of bonds and yet was nothing but a shackle…

Why did he wear the damned ring? Had he worn it that day aboard Dmitri’s yacht?

Had he worn it over the past five years?

Anxiety rippled over her, like a flurry of ants had skittered over her skin.

Just like her, the woman’s gaze also fell on the ring and then shifted to encompass the both of them. Leah felt her curiosity like a prickle, could see her trying to calculate where Leah fit into Stavros’s life.

Nowhere, Leah reminded herself. That he wore that ring was probably nothing but a reminder of his duty to Giannis.

Did he keep it on when he made love to the regal Helene? What would it be like to be the woman he respected, he adored, the woman he promised his utter devotion to? Would his passion run just as deep as his sense of duty?

“Even in the most unlikely chance that I find you that irresistible…” Utter mockery resonated in every word, crashing her down. “I will sign the divorce papers, release your inheritance. You’ll be free.”

Three months with Stavros…

“The freedom to live my life as I want is my basic right. I shouldn’t have to prove anything for it nor should I have to threaten…nor do I have to do despicable things.”

“So you’re not completely without conscience?”

She refused to answer that when he was the one who had pushed her to it. “You’re not the lord of my life.”

“Apparently, I am. And you lost all rights to your own life when you threatened it by living so recklessly.” His very stillness as his gaze burned with frustration was disconcerting. “Theos, Leah…Calista died and Giannis almost did because of the heart attack you gave him. How can you sit there and defend yourself?”

“I can defend myself because…” Clutching the metal edge of the table, Leah breathed deeply. His accusation was unfair, so wrong, and yet, the guilt it brought was no less suffocating.

And to dig into the past, to tell him the truth would mean exposing herself to a man who tolerated no weakness, knew no fears.

Would he laugh at her as he had done just now or pity her?

So she gave in. “Fine. I’ll do as you demand and earn that right back.”

Silence met her acceptance.

He hadn’t expected her to give in so quickly. Did he think it was an admission of guilt?

His arrogance that he knew everyone and the best for everyone had riled her from day one. Not once had he tried to figure out what or how she had felt. He’d only made assumptions, and then ordered her around.

He dropped some bills on the table, and extended his hand for her. “Let’s pick up what you need for a few days. The movers will bring the rest of your belongings later.”

Panic ran free in her gut as Leah shook her head. “No. I…I can’t just pack up everything I need in ten minutes. I need a few days.”

She couldn’t just move in with him in a matter of hours. She needed to get used to the idea first. Needed to get her head screwed on right.

He checked the glinting Rolex on his wrist and then looked back at her. “I’ll have someone come by to give us a hand. In the meantime, we can get started.”

“You’re actually, physically going to help me pack?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Yes, of course it is,” she sputtered, refusing his outstretched hand. “I don’t want you in my…I just… The flat is a mess, and you’ll instantly judge me and tell me I shouldn’t be allowed to live by myself or some such nonsense.”

The hateful man had the gall to smile at her. To actually smile, showing his perfectly even teeth and the dimple in one cheek that should have made him look effeminate yet only added to that austere masculinity.

“What if I tell you that housekeeping is not a criterion I’ll count?”

Desperation coated her throat. “I…I’m not comfortable with others touching my personal stuff.”

“Neither am I about welcoming you to my estate…” With his hand at her elbow, he made it imperative for her to stand up. “I won’t touch anything. You can pack and I’ll supervise.”

“You’ll lord it over me, you mean?” she said, using sarcasm to hide the trembling beneath.

In all the years she had known him, he had, in turns, aggravated her, captivated her and in the end, had ended up ruling over her life. And that was when there was no direct relationship between them.

How was she supposed to survive through three months of living with him?

CHAPTER FIVE

SHE HAD BEEN lying blatantly, of course.

Stavros didn’t know what shocked him more. The fact that she would tell such a white lie about something so trivial or the reality of her lifeless, joyless flat.

It was as if she had intentionally designed herself a sterile prison cell, had punished herself.

Everything inside him recoiled that she had lived like this for five years. Why? Why live as though she was punishing herself when she had argued with him so furiously that she wanted it to end?

Had Calista’s death scared her so much? Had it really changed her?

There was not a single thing out of place in the living room, or the small kitchen, or in the glimpse he had caught of her bedroom. She had everything she required.

The cupboards were full of silverware; a plasma television adorned the wall in the living room, yet was coated with five layers of dust.

There were no decorative items, no knickknacks. Just the bare essentials wherever he looked. The walls were a pristine white exactly as he had remembered from five years ago, when he had inspected the building and the flat, a week after they had married.

It screamed of loneliness, detachment.

Leah was a firestorm and it seemed only a ghost of that girl lived here.

The first year and a few months into the second after she had come to live here, he had had things delivered to her. Boxes of clothes and shoes, handbags and other accessories Helene had told him a young woman would require. He had even sent her things that had once belonged to her mother, found when he and Dmitri had gone through Giannis’s old estate after his heart attack…

But she had sent every box back, stubbornly refusing to accept any of it, and so he had stopped trying. Even the box with her mother’s things.

He had, conveniently, shrugged off his duty toward her. To the point of ignoring her very existence.

His gut twisting into a tight, unforgiving knot, he followed her into her bedroom. There was a nightstand next to the bed. A tissue box, some pencils and loose paper, and a tiny photograph of her father, he assumed from the same brown eyes, were on it.

Stretching on her toes, she pulled a bag out of her closet that was already half full. Turned around and stilled as he stayed at the entrance.

“I have someone bringing up boxes. Not that it seems you need any.”

“The work room has lots of stuff I need.”

He nodded and waited, his thoughts in an unprecedented jumble.

“I don’t have to stay in your house for this…this test of yours, Stavros. I could just continue here.”

He prowled into the small room, feeling on edge. He was angry at himself, he realized slowly. And he was angry at her. It was irrational, and yet he couldn’t loosen its grip over him.

“Why not?” The taunt in his words shamed him.

The brown of her eyes transforming into a dazzling color, she glared at him. Her pulse at the neck fluttered belying the anger in her eyes. “Because I don’t think it’s a good idea.

“You can’t stand me, for sins I know and some I don’t. And I…you’re arrogant, you’re a hypocrite and I…” she said with that standard animosity she seemed to reserve especially for him. Yet he heard the quiver beneath those words.

She was trying so hard to hide her awareness of him. So hard to fight it.

The Leah that he knew, that he thought he had known, had never fought anything she felt. Gave in to every juvenile urge, every self-serving impulse until she crashed and burned.

And had dragged Calista down with her.

This effort now…it sparked a curious fire in him just as much as the fluttering pulse at her neck did.

He came to her bed and leaned against it, blocking her. “So that you could continue to live in this hole like some damned martyr?”

A silk skirt in hand, she turned that gaze to him again. “It is what you chose for me.”

“I never meant for you to live like a prisoner. I sent you everything you needed.”

“To do what with?” Throwing the skirt and a couple more things into the bag, she zipped it up vehemently. “I have no friends, Stavros. No family…”

“You rejected the one you have for years. You still do,” he couldn’t help but point out, a gnawing frustration in his gut.

She didn’t even flinch as she continued. “Even the staff at the fashion house, people I have been working with for five years, they treat me with this—” he saw her swallow and a wave of tenderness, shocking and acute, rose inside him “—nauseating combination of dislike and affected regard.

“I don’t know if they think my designs are really good or if they are just saying that because I’m Leah Sporades, the wife of the textile magnate of Greece, a shame he hides from the world.

“You married me even though you despised the sight of me. You…you kissed me in front of the media that day for the express purpose of warning away my friends, the entire world. You might as well have branded me like they do livestock.”

“Leah—”

“No, Stavros…I was nineteen. I lost the one friend I had, Giannis had just had a heart attack…”

“Whom you still refuse to see,” he cut in.

Do not give up on my Leah, Stavros. Please…she is very fragile…

Fragile was the last thing he had ever thought of Leah…She had barely ever sat down for five minutes with him, yet even surrounded by tubes and equipment, she’d been all Giannis could think about.

Every inch of her slender frame vibrating with anger and pain, she clutched the lapels of his shirt. “…and in the next two days, you took my entire world away from me. You locked me up here and promptly forgot about me.

“Did you ever feel even an ounce of shame that you coerced a nineteen-year-old into marriage?”

Stavros felt her words dig into him like the serrated edge of a blade, drawing blood.

For five years, he had ignored her very existence, had let her live like this, had informed Giannis again and again that Leah was well…

How had he committed such an unforgivable mistake?

“Answer me.”

“No, I don’t regret it. I would have done anything to save you from that drug-induced-drink-all-night-reckless-party life.”

No denial rushed out of her this time. Instead, she closed her eyes and bent her head to his chest. The raw intimacy of the gesture flayed him, reaching a part he didn’t know he possessed.

Her shoulders pushing at his chest, the scent of her coating the air he breathed, her lithe form was so tempting. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, he wanted to bury his mouth in… Feeling like an iron anvil was sitting on his chest, he clasped her wrists to push her away.

Instead, the pad of his thumb moved over the plump vein of its own will.

Her breaths came in a slow rasp until, suddenly, she looked up. His lungs burned for air as her fingers laced around his, as a blunt nail raked the center of his palm, her molten brown gaze clung to his lips.

Something so desperate and wanting flashed in her gaze that Stavros dropped her hand.

It was so unlike Leah that a shiver raked down his spine.

Jerking away from him, she drew a deep breath. “Deal with the consequences of what you did then,” she said, moving her hand over the room. “Alleviating your guilt about this…it’s not my responsibility.”

It was the most adult thing she had ever said to him. And just like that, his world tilted an infinitesimal inch.

A world in which Leah was right and he was wrong. A world in which he had let himself be led by pain and resentment until he had neglected his duty…neglected the vow he had made to Giannis.

“You’re right. It’s not.”

“What?”

“I said you’re right,” he said willingly, the bright wonder on her face drawing it out of him. “What I did that day had consequences that I didn’t own completely.”

“Am I actually hearing this?” Her brows rose into her hair, her mouth opened in a long O. Mirth overflowed in those eyes, making her look absolutely stunning. “Boom!” The scent of her skin swirled around him, drugging him so insidiously that his blood became sluggish. “Did you hear that, Stavros? I think the sky just exploded…”

He stole another greedy look at her. And like a snake waiting to strike, the most incredible urge to press his thumb against the lushness of her lower lip, struck him.

He collected himself slowly and stepped out, wondering if this sinuous desire for her was his true penance.

“Show me your workroom,” he said, over his shoulder.

Her workroom knocked the breath out of Stavros.

It was as though a veil, the veil that separated Leah from the rest of them, had been lifted. A tentative smile on her face, she walked around touching things here and there in the chaotic room, eons different from the Leah who usually glared at him with such hatred.

Sunlight poured in streams into the high-ceilinged room, exposing the beams. Everywhere he looked, there was color, such a vivid contrast to the rest of the apartment that it took him a few moments to actually see it.

Two racks hung around the back, with evening gowns in different degrees of completion. An old sewing machine lay on a table in the other corner. One whole wall was covered with sketches made in pencil, illustrations, even cutouts from fashion magazines.

Swatches of fabric were pasted on another wall. Reams of it spilled over from a rickety shelf in the corner—satin and silk and cotton, pretty much every fabric he knew of in his ten years in the textile industry.

Something tightened in his chest.

“The retail buyer that you were talking about, what is she interested in?”

“I’m putting together a collection of evening wear for her—cocktail dresses, formal gowns, and the prize of the collection will be one bridal dress.”

“That’s quite a workload for one designer…”

“Slash seamstress,” she finished, fingering the sheer fabric of one unfinished dress.

“You’re going to…”

An utterly confident smile dawned on her face. “Actually cut and sew the dresses, yes. I custom-design and sew every dress myself and that’s what I would like my brand to be. When the buyer was talking about what she would like, what she liked about my previous designs…I could see the concept from start to finish.”

Color flushed her skin.

He walked around and touched the cut bodice in ivory silk. “Has she seen the flat sketches?”

She shook her head. And he saw the surprise in her eyes that he knew the term. “We have had two discussions around it.”

“Leah, it’s a huge risk to create an entire collection for one woman’s tastes at this stage.”

She tilted her jaw aggressively. “You gave me your word not ten minutes ago.” Her lithe frame vibrated with her growing panic.

“And I will stand by it. But I’m also a businessman and in case, you have forgotten, I run a group of textile factories that export all over the world. All I’m doing is pointing out the pitfalls, as I would do with any business I want to invest in. Creatives have a tendency to run the business into the ground with their half-realized dreams.”

“But I’m not creating exactly what she wants. More like my vision of what she has in mind.” She turned to him, a frown on her face. “Anything I tried to design with some freedom at the fashion house ends up changed for the brand of the house. I want this collection to be mine. And I need cash upfront for all the raw materials.”

He nodded. “I want an expense report including quotes from all the vendors you’ll be sourcing the raw material from. I want every penny accounted for.”

“I will send you my spreadsheet.”

“You have one already?”

“Surprised, aren’t you? I’ve been having problems with one vendor based in Brazil though. He keeps upping the price of the cotton I need from him.”

“I can help with that,” he said, the fire in her eyes stunning him. “Do you plan to hire another seamstress?”

“Not at this point.”

“But it’s too much work for just one person.”

“I don’t want anyone else involved in this…in my first collection.”

“Fine,” he said, noting that the stubborn streak of independence was still there. Also that whatever advice he gave now, she wouldn’t heed it. “You’ll have the money within the hour. I will be gone next week, and during that time—”

Walking back into the kitchen, she pulled a bottle of water from the fridge. “I’ll be watched by your housekeeper and your new security head. Poor Dmitri, along with his arm candies, will be reduced to babysitting duties. Although, I don’t mind him.”

“No?” The question left his mouth before he knew he had thought it.

“Dmitri?” An almost dazed kind of smile glimmered in her expression. And he cut the irrationally possessive thought her expression evoked before it could form fully. “Of course not. He was always kind, even when Calista…” Sudden tension dawned in her gaze and she looked away from him.

“When Calista what, Leah?”

She cleared her throat and started again but resolutely kept her gaze away from him. “This one time, we snuck into his room and stole a bottle of whiskey. Only he caught us…”

“Whiskey, Leah?”

“We were just goofing around, Stavros. We were seventeen.”

“My father was an alcoholic who stole from his own parents, sold our house just so that he could drink, and drove my mother away. Calista wasn’t supposed to even touch that stuff.”

Shock flared in her gaze, widening those beautiful eyes. Only then did he realize how much he had betrayed. “I had no idea, Stavros.”

“What did he do, Leah?”

“Oh, he told us we could drink the whiskey—” color stole into her cheeks and she wouldn’t meet his eyes “—as long as we were also going to join him for a threesome after.”

“Cristo! Of all the things to say to—”

As if expecting his reaction, Leah sighed. “We dropped the bottle where we stood and we ran, Stavros. Dmitri was used to…he knew how to deal with us.”

Unlike you, her unsaid accusation screamed.

He had a feeling Dmitri definitely understood Leah far better than he did. A mistake he had to rectify…

If Giannis had asked me… He pushed away the scenario provoked by Dmitri’s taunting remark from his head and focused his mind on practicalities.

“Leah…fashion design is extremely hard to break into. On a given day, there are tens, if not hundreds, of designers launching new labels. And I don’t know whether you actually have any talent for this.”

“I know that. All I’m asking is a chance to do it, to access the resources that I do have.”

“And when—” he checked himself as she threw that trademark glare at him “—if you fail in this venture?”

“Then it will be my failure. All mine. Just as the success would be. It will be something I have put my heart and joy into, something that doesn’t scare me.”

“I thought nothing scared you, Leah.”

She offered him a perfunctory smile, and Stavros realized how much he didn’t know about the girl he had thought his bitterest penance.

CHAPTER SIX

A WEEK LATER, Leah walked over the white sandy beach on Stavros’s estate on one of the tiny islands along the Aegean coast. Stavros’s “house” turned out to be a hundred-acre estate close to the sea, a ten-minute helicopter ride from Athens that had thrilled her quite a bit.

Even with Stavros studying her curiously the whole time.

She had lived in Athens for so many years and yet she had known nothing about the little slice of heaven that was the island he called home.

Nestled amidst two tiny hills, the mansion was stunning in its simplicity. No glittering glass bars like Dmitri’s yacht, or a lifeless steel-and-chrome affair, which was lately the trend with billionaire homes.

The manor was made entirely of stone, with cathedral ceilings framed by exposed beams, whitewashed walls, a pool and a wine cellar. It was full of soaring spaces and light, stunning in its simple lines.

Austere, private and yet so breathtaking, the exact reflection of the man who owned it, it was an authentic slice of rural Greece. But even when it was only the wind chimes that punctured the silence, even when it was just the staff keeping her company as it had been at the apartment, Leah felt anything but lonely.

There was something very peaceful about the estate and the people surrounding it.

She smiled now about how worried she had been about being confined in a house with him. About seeing Stavros wherever she turned. Not only did the house boast seven bedrooms and attached baths, but Stavros, when he returned from Katrakis Textiles, she realized, worked in the estate.

Although if he had looked smolderingly arrogant in his suit, he looked painfully handsome in light blue jeans and a white polo shirt.

The sounds of the helicopter blades had jolted her from her bed the first morning. Still in her cotton shorts and sleeveless T-shirt, she had run to the attached balcony, spurred on by what, she still didn’t know.

Dressed in a white dress shirt that draped lovingly over his broad frame and plain khaki trousers that looked way too sexy, he had been about to step in.

Except he had turned and looked at her, the breeze ruffling his hair.

Her heart thudding, her mouth dry, Leah had broken his gaze and gone back in.

Now returning from the beach, she waved at workers heading home to the small village from the vineyard, which she had been surprised to learn was operational. Several guesthouses were dotted across the grounds in addition to a horse farm.

When she had laughingly asked Stavros which one Dmitiri preferred when he visited, she had gotten a black look in response.

It was as she passed a couple, probably in their fifties, that she remembered another little tidbit. Stavros and Calista had been from a little village that surrounded Stavros’s estate. His grandparents, she knew, still lived there. Even though their grandson was a household name in all of Greece.

Feeling nauseous at the thought of how brazenly she had threatened to go to the media and how his face had blazed in contempt, she pulled in a long breath and broke into a run.

From the moment he had showed her around the estate, she had loved running through the trails cleared through lush acreage. In just the past week, she had found a trail that touched the horse farm and rounded through the orchard.

She turned the winding bend around it and came to a skidding halt near the glittering pool that was by the house.

The evening sun kissing the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones, Stavros was sitting at the poolside table.

A tall jug of the customary lemonade that she requested every day and a selection of fruits and assorted cheeses were on the glass-topped table between the two loungers.

His head was thrown back against it, and his eyes were closed. Her breathing still raspy, Leah stilled. Her gaze lingering on the corded column of his throat, the planes of his sculpted face, at the way his long lashes almost kissed those sharp cheekbones…

It was something to see the man in repose like that, to study him without his contemptuous gaze peeling layers off her. And the way her breath hitched and her gut folded, the frenzied clamoring of her heartbeat to the very sight of him, it was telling.

For the past week, she had seen the stamp of the man in the thriving estate.

In the tired but happy workers on the vineyard, in the affluent praise the villagers bestowed on him, in the way some of the women’s eyes had widened when they had realized who she was, the reverence in their tone when they addressed her as Thespinis Sporades…

The responsibility of bearing that name, the reality of being the woman Stavros would respect and know and want…it sent shivers down her spine.

The usual white dress shirt he wore was unbuttoned, showing dark olive skin. His cuffs, folded back, displayed his muscled forearms, to the veins extending from his wrist and down… The sight of those powerful thighs, encased in tight blue jeans, made her remember how hard and corded they had been against her own…made her wonder how they would cradle her if she…

Heat, that had nothing to do with her running, pooled under her skin. The stretchy fabric of her Lycra top rasped against her nipples, the soft hem of her shorts rubbing against her inner thighs…

She was breathing like she had run another few laps, her skin so overheated that dunking into the pool was so inviting. Just as she found her willpower and took a step, she heard her name.

Turning slowly, she saw his fingers laced against his chest, faint color bleeding into those cheekbones.

His eyes were still closed when he said, “Did you have a good week, Leah?”

He sounded hoarse, uneven. Very unlike him. Had he felt the way her gaze devoured him in that motionless state?

How could just looking at him fill her blood with this molten wanting?

“Come, sit here and tell me how it was,” he said softly.

While she still stood there stupidly, hovering between drugged inertia and fluttering panic, his gaze opened slowly. Traveled over her with such a thorough intensity that she could almost believe he had been dying to look at her.

In the seconds-long perusal, Leah knew he had noted everything about her, including her heightened color. Hoped he would put it down to the fact that she had been running.

She ran her palm over her forehead, wondering if she was feverish. Because that’s how she felt. Could a harmless, adolescent crush turn into a full-fledged obsession, she thought sarcastically. “I’m sweaty. I need a shower,” she finally responded, and began to walk away.

“Rosa told me you like to swim after your run. Don’t change your routine on my account. Or am I one of those incredible things that scare you, Leah?”

It was so on target that her denial shot out of her mouth like a missile in a defensive tone. “I’m not afraid of you.”

His brows rose questioningly. Then he smiled, a real flicker of warmth lighting up those tawny irises.

She could deal with Stavros hating her, questioning her worth, and thinking the absolute worst of her. This…strangely speculative mood he seemed to be in, she couldn’t.

No way was she going to put on her bikini and parade in front of him. She would probably self-combust if he so much as looked at her, even innocently. “I ran far more than I intended today. I’ll skip the swim,” she said, turning around.

“How do you like the estate?”

She was so wired up into his every breath, every nuance that her foot slipped on a wet patch.

He was out of the chair and by her side in a flash, his hand around her waist. The side of her breasts squished against him, her midriff knocked hard against his. All of her breath jarred into her throat, her muscles groaning at the impact. He was so hard and hot…

“You are unhurt?”

“I’m fine.” She pushed the words out, feeling so out of control that tears prickled behind her eyes.

What was the matter with her? Where was this desperate awareness stemming from?

He was silent next to her, his large hands still resting on her hips. She didn’t have the guts to turn and meet his gaze.

The idea of seeing the same awareness in his drove her out of her skin. The idea of seeing nothing but a patient indifference made her skin crawl.

With the guise of reaching for the lemonade, she withdrew from his touch. “It’s remote and a little out of sync with the twenty-first century, don’t you think?”

For the first time in years, she had felt completely at home, had forgotten the pain of the past and the endless, lonely future stretching ahead of her. But she had nothing to fight her reaction with, if not with her lies. Nothing except to continue the animosity between them that she didn’t even know the origins of anymore.

“Remote, yes. Out of sync with the rest of the world, no.”

She looked at him over the rim of her glass. “Perfect for you though—stark, severe and forbidding.”

“That’s exactly what Dmitri says when he visits. Says he can’t stand the relentless silence.” He smiled. “So you do not like it then?”

She frowned, wondering why he was asking. “I just… I prefer something a little flashier and more hip, like Dmitri’s yacht. Or that infamous bachelor pad of his in the business district of Athens.” When had lying become this easy? She had been to Dmitri’s flat once and it had been a soulless, colorless monstrosity of steel and chrome. “This is a bit too isolated for my taste.”

“Is it?”

She swallowed the lump in her throat at the thought of leaving here. But if this was how she was going to react to seeing him after a week, she couldn’t imagine what she would do if she saw him daily. “Hmmm.”

A little knot tied his brows and cleared again. Something she had never seen danced in the depths of his gaze.

He was going to relent. He was going to send her back to that dinky flat, back to the dragon, Mrs. Kovlakis. A breeze could have knocked her down at how desperately sad the thought made her.

Dark gaze unmoving from her, he finished her drink. She looked down, rattled by the intimacy of the gesture. He put the glass down slowly and wiped his mouth while she waited on edge. “I think I will choose not to believe you, agape mou.”

The endearment ripped through her. It meant nothing to him but weaved an intimacy that she didn’t know how to counter. “What…what do you mean?”

“You are lying.” The announcement reverberated around them in the vast space. He didn’t sound angry though. “I probably have been arrogant enough in the past to take everything you said on face value. Even made it easy for you to manipulate me, ne? The why of it, I have not learned it yet.” A promise, that he would find out sooner or later, resonated in his tone.

“I think you love the estate. I barely took my jeep out when I got stopped so many times today. Everyone already knew your name, everyone had tales to tell about you. Rosa,” he said, coming closer, “even said she had never met such a hardworking and lovely young woman.”

Leah frowned, as if trying to keep her shock out of her face. “Of course, I was forced to be nice to her. Your housekeeper is an evil genius that bewitched me with that decadent dark coffee and servings of baklava.”

“The important question is how many things have you lied about?” he continued, as if uninterrupted.

Her skin paled, leaving such a frightened look in her eyes that Stavros jerked her around to him.

Was that unwise desire that widened those beautiful eyes real?

Was the pain in her eyes when she spoke of Calista real?

The whole week that he had been gone, he had found himself running through every encounter he had ever had with Leah.

Wondered why she had done so many things he had forbidden her to do, wondered how someone who could be so rejecting and disrespectful of Giannis again and again could also turn around and mourn for his sister, Calista, for so many years.

She had lied about the apartment. She had lied today about liking the estate, a seemingly inconsequential thing that threatened nothing that she held dear.

A keening frustration spread through his veins. Like there was a pit full of dangerous truths that he had never faced and Leah held the key to it all. He forced a smile to his mouth and pressed his hand to her back.

She instantly stiffened and he gritted his jaw, fighting the shockingly strong urge to assert his right like an uncivilized thug.

Right then, it seemed he cared very little about duty, or what was right. All he wanted to do was touch her, to feel like this stranger who told him nothing but lies, that selfish, reckless girl he had married, was really present.

Right then, he wanted to claim something, a part of her, even an emotion, an expression, that no one else knew but him.

Right then, he wanted to be a self-serving bastard like Dmitri and assure himself that she would respond, even against her own surprisingly strong will, when he touched her. That she couldn’t pretend, fake, or lie to him in that.

It was as if suddenly there was a beast inside him that wanted to do as it pleased, that was railing against the cage after a lifetime of doing what was right.

And it was Leah that did these things to him.

“So your lawyer friend visited you on Wednesday.”

Resignation flattened the curve of her mouth. “His name is Philip.” He was only a few inches taller than her, and standing a step below her, his eyes were level with her mouth.

What would she do if he touched those lush lips with his?

Would she fight him and scratch him like the alley cat she had always pretended to be? Or would she sink into his kiss as that desperate desire in her eyes suggested?

Which was the real Leah?

“He was in a foul temper because I came away with you without taking his advice. Not knowing how autocratic you can be, he thinks I gave in too easily.”

Stavros wanted to figure her out, put her in a category and move on with life. He didn’t want this curiosity, didn’t know how to arrest this indulgent self-awareness that she incited in him.

“I think he sees his piece of pie from your fortune dwindling away.”

She walked around the table like a cornered prey. “Because he befriended me with nothing but an eye toward what I’m worth?”

“Yes. Your fortune always attracts those kinds of men.”

A sigh escaped her, but she wasn’t spitting in fury as he had imagined. As if he were the despot she could hate again. “And of course, you know everyone and their intentions best.”

“No, I know Philip Cosgrove better than you do. He has had two broken engagements—one with an American candy heiress and the other with a princess from a minor South American nation. He has also been having an affair with a client.”

Hands on hips, she looked like a wildcat. “You had him investigated?”

“You should know the truth about him.”

“Truth about his personal life? He’s a friend and my lawyer, Stavros. Not my lover. If he was going to be one, I’m sure he would have volunteered that information. And even if he didn’t, it’s my decision to make.”

The thought of Leah with any man…he wasn’t prepared to ponder his reaction to that. “Now you know what decision to make.”

“About whether I want to screw him or not?” she said crudely, even as color darkened her cheeks. “You don’t have the right to police me on who I sleep with.”

“Discussing my rights and privileges when it comes to you is not a conversation you will like, agape mou.”

“No, I won’t. Because you’re a hypocrite. Do you tell your lovers that you have a wife you hide as if she were a stain on the very fabric of your life, Stavros?” Her fingers clutched his hand and pulled it up, a startling tremble in it. The contact jolted through him. “Do you take it off when you undress your lover? Do you—”

“I don’t have to tell them anything,” he whispered, dragging her against him. She was stiff against him, yet just the drag of her body set his muscles curling with need.

Ever since she had entered his life, there had been no escape from the shackles his own sense of honor bound him with.

Strange then that he had resented it and fought it for so long.

Was it because, as he had always known, Leah would never be the kind of wife he had imagined for himself—someone calm and dependable like Helene? Even then, had he known that she would incite him to this kind of reckless, unwise need?

“Anyone who’s someone knows I have a wife. Which also means I don’t have to fend off women with marriage on their mind…”

She stared, unblinking. Her nostrils flared. “You’re…disgusting.”

It was addictive to play her own game with her, so compelling to watch the different expressions pass through her eyes. In that moment, there were no lies she could tell him. In that moment, the connection between them was as explosive and destructive as the wildfire that had wrecked through the surrounding acreage a few years ago.

A fire that was going to need feeding soon if he didn’t it to want it to consume him, as it had already begun to…if he didn’t want to lose all sense of right and wrong.

And what was wrong with wanting his own wife in his bed? Maybe if he gave in to the fire, he could function normally again.

“You wanted to know,” he goaded her.

“No, I didn’t. I was just trying to make a point.”

“You sounded like a nagging, jealous wife. Just what I wanted my marriage to be.”

All color fled from her face, leaving her gaze stricken. Tears pooled in her eyes. And the sight of those big brown eyes brimming with moisture punched him in the gut.

“Theos, Leah—”

“I hate you. I hate that you’re keeping me here. I hate that you have so much power over my life and that you use it at every turn to put me in the wrong. And I’m such a pathetic coward that I still stand here, day after day, hoping that you will change your mind. I forget that all you want is to punish me, and yourself, for what happened to Calista.

“That’s all this is, isn’t it? Duty, righting a wrong…nothing touches you beyond that.”

She cast another desperate glance at him, swiped her hands roughly over her eyes and walked away.

Her words sliced at Stavros rendering everything she said about him a lie.

It did hurt, he realized with a strange new awareness. What she said about him mattered because he hadn’t meant to hurt her today. Christos, he had never meant to hurt Leah.

He had been powerless about her influence on Calista, he had despised her willful rejection of Giannis’s love, he had resented that she had sealed his fate the moment she had walked into his life but he had never meant to hurt her.

Not even the day when he had spoken his vows to her utterly petrified form.

Yet, it seemed it was all he had ever done.

That Leah could be vulnerable when it came to him, instead of making him powerful, felt like a curse.

Giannis had saved him from a life of misery and poverty and yawning emptiness and all he had done in return was make his granddaughter’s life miserable.

He wouldn’t forsake his duty, but neither did he want to hurt Leah anymore.

Leah leaned against the wall in her workroom, shame ringing in her ears. She couldn’t believe she had betrayed herself like that. She didn’t even care that he had investigated Philip or about what he had found.

But when he had called her a nagging, jealous wife, it was as if she could see their future like that…as if he would never see her true self. As if he would never know the real her.

Standing up, she reached for a jug of water. Poured herself a tall drink and guzzled it down.

It couldn’t matter this much, not when she would be gone soon.

She couldn’t be so vulnerable to him, couldn’t get so emotional. The only way to accomplish that was to accept him this way. He would watch her, hover over her, dictate her life forever, if she wasn’t careful now.

She would give up a little now for the long run.

It wasn’t as if the news of Philip’s past engagements affected her.

For as long as she had understood herself, only one man had always stubbornly occupied the space in her head. And still, only one man could set her heart racing, only one man could make her hate herself that she wasn’t smarter or calmer or even stronger, that she wasn’t a match for him in any way.

For the next week, Leah barely slept. The retail buyer, Mrs. DuPont, set up an appointment to see what Leah had for her so far. The conversation that followed, where Leah explained to her that she was now living at Stavros’s estate and her reaction to the fact that she was that Textile Magnate’s wife, had been extremely awkward. As if suddenly Leah’s worth as a designer had changed. Whether for good or bad, Leah had no idea.

Once she had heard from her, Leah had finished the sewing on the first three dresses.

Unaccountably nervous, she had snarled at Stavros yesterday for making it all so complicated.

The evening after Mrs. Dupont had called, a seamstress had arrived at her workroom. Her mouth falling open in awe, she fingered the turquoise sheer silk of the cocktail dress, had said in broken English that she loved sewing, and would Mrs. Sporades please give her work.

Having neatly been maneuvered into it, Leah had nodded. Now, she was glad she had given in to Stavros’s tactics. Anna was not only talented but also enthusiastic. Having arranged the three dresses on a rack, Leah endlessly tidied the workroom, her stomach a tangle of nerves.

She had risked a lot to be able to make this ready for Mrs. DuPont, to arrive at this stage of making her dream come true.

And yet, it was Stavros’s challenging gaze that stayed at the forefront of her mind. The strength of her desire to show him that she was talented, hardworking, that she had what it took to succeed, only grew.

She was determined to make him see her as his equal, in this at least.

Leah would have had her meeting with the retail buyer this afternoon.

The small nugget jolted through Stavros’s subconscious like he had set up a reminder chip in his brain to go off every hour. All through his day, through numerous meetings, he found himself thinking of her, of how nervous she had been last night, of how he had seen her work long hours, only remembering to eat because Rosa threatened her.

In the last two weeks, he had found that he couldn’t fault her dedication or hard work. And the night before last, learning that she had once again skipped her dinner, he had gone into her workroom.

He had found himself on her doorstep, stunned into silence as Leah commanded Anna to turn around slowly. Being almost as tall as him, Anna was the perfect model to showcase a knee-length sheath dress in red silk.

Simple yet chic, it touched Anna with sophistication she hadn’t possessed before.

Suddenly, he was extremely glad that Giannis had pushed him and Dmitri to start their work at his textile factories on the sewing floor.

In two weeks, he had learned how dedicated and hardworking she was, and in that moment, Stavros had no doubt of her talent.

It was after six by the time the helicopter touched down at his estate. A curious eagerness buffeted him like the wind from the rotor blades.

He headed directly for her workroom, seeing the light on as he approached the house.

He found her at her drawing table, one hand around her nape, turning her head this way and then other. And then her face flopped down onto her table, her shoulders trembled, and a loud, rattling sigh escaped her.

The depth of frustration in that sound startled him.

She straightened up again, tore off sheets from her sketchpad, crumpled them and tossed them.

He must have made a sound, because she suddenly turned then. “I’m so sorry, Anna, but I won’t have any work for you in the near—”

In the few seconds before she realized that it was him, Stavros saw it. Distress and disappointment, which slowly cycled to wariness for him.

She slid off the high stool, holding herself stiff. “I thought it was Anna.”

“How did it go?” he said, his eagerness to know unprecedented.

Folding her arms defensively, she shrugged. He saw her swallow, look away, and turn toward him again.

When she met his gaze again, she looked ready to battle him. “You were right,” she said with bitterness coating it. “She didn’t like a single design. You’ll be happy to know—”

“You think I would be happy that all your backbreaking work came to nothing?”

She had the sense to look ashamed. Theos, she truly believed him to be a sadistic monster, didn’t she? Had he ever given her reason to believe otherwise?

“How so?” he asked, noting the lines of strain around her mouth.

Now, she looked stunned. “What do you mean?”

“Why did she reject them? Did she give a reason?” When she still stared at him blankly, irritation touched him. “I’m trying to have a conversation, not attack you,” he burst out.

“She thought they were far too high-end for her store, way too sophisticated and bohemian for the clientele that comes to her boutiques. Too geared toward the jet-setting club like your husband’s were her exact words.”

Whatever she had shown her, Mrs. Dupont had refused to budge from her stance. Disappointment settled on Leah’s shoulders like a heavy cloak. Had she risked everything for nothing?

“So what is your plan of action next?”

She pulled her attention back to Stavros, sharply aware of his potent presence in her small workroom. In every conversation they had ever had about her work, his interest had been genuine, and suddenly she felt like an ungrateful bitch. Grabbing the notebook, she showed him the notes she had scribbled earlier. “I did what you said I should do in the first place. Had a lengthy discussion about her expectations.” That he asked so politely made her failure even more real. “So it’s back to the drawing board for me.”

He took the book from her and flipped through the notes. “Didn’t you leave the fashion house because you wanted to give your own vision a try?”

It had been the foremost thought in her head since Mrs. DuPont had left. “Yes, it was. But it also means walking away from a sure customer, and continuing to trust my vision.”

Leaning by her side, he crossed his ankles. The long stretch of his legs in front of her, his tapering waist, the breadth of his shoulders…his masculinity was a striking contrast against her silks and dresses.

“Tell me… all the ideas you discussed today, do they excite you enough to want to risk everything like you did with me?”

Sucking in a deep breath at how effectively he shot to the heart of the matter, Leah shook her head. Talking strategy with him was the last thing she had expected.

He threw the book on the table and turned to her. “Then it is as simple as saying no, and forging ahead.”

“But—”

“I saw Anna wearing that red dress and I believe that you’re talented, Leah. Add to that, a rich husband who’s willing to feed you and supply you with endless fabric. Trust your gut and go for it.”

Stunned into a monosyllabic response, Leah stared after his retreating form hungrily, all of her crushing disappointment from the day leaving her in a whoosh. Every muscle in her body ached and yet she felt like there was a renewed fire in her.

And it was thanks to the man she had deceived and hated for years.

CHAPTER SEVEN

LEAH SMOOTHED DOWN the fabric of the beige, supremely boring satin silk she was wearing and suppressed another sigh. The dress, picked by the stylist and coming with a hefty designer tag, wasn’t ugly per se.

But the classic fitting bodice and the flaring skirt were not at all her style. With her hair pulled back from her face and the cashmere wrap, she felt thoroughly unlike herself. The heavy diamond choker lay against her throat like a dead, cold weight that could siphon off every bit of warmth from her skin.

Blinking, she looked at Stavros sitting on the other side of the wide cabin, his arrogant head bent to his laptop.

She unbuckled the seatbelt and paced the length of the long cabin all the way to the rear and back.

Her back ached from all the work she had done the past few weeks, once she had received the delivery of all the raw material she had ordered.

In the evenings, she had had meetings every day of the week, some arranged by her, some by the man who, it seemed, would never relent in his duty.

She had met with a graphic designer, a contact she had made working at the fashion house, who was designing her website; a seamstress who had come in from the village because, like Anna, she had heard what Leah did and begged to work on them with her, because she loved dressmaking; and with an attorney that Stavros had arranged to take care of trademarking her label and setting up a company in her name.

Tears had filled her eyes when she had eyed the paperwork with her name on it.

Leah Huntington Sporades—Head Designer.

Her father would have been so proud of her. Giannis, if he knew, would be so proud of her. Even more so, because he had started Katrakis Textiles as a small retail merchant decades ago. But seeing him would mean getting close to him and she couldn’t risk that.

Stavros had stood witness to all of it, a silent specter in the room as the platinum-tipped pen had slipped from her hand a couple of times when she wanted to sign the papers. Lost in the magnitude of the moment, she had felt grateful for his hand on her shoulder.

“Have you picked a name for the label?” his question had boomeranged in the silence, testing her strength.

Calista and she had made so many plans. She had been the one who had pushed Leah into stretching her wings, given her confidence that her designs were brilliant. Had worn the dress Leah had designed to her eighteenth birthday party and had dazzled the world in it.

Holding the logo she had come up with with the help of a graphic designer—an elaborately stylish L and C tangled up together, she whispered, “Leah & Calista.”

His silence beat down on her as she braced herself against his censure.

All her hopes and happiness tied to that name, she couldn’t feign defiance. Couldn’t muster any defense against his intrusion into what was a monumental moment for her. Would have crumbled into pieces if he had pushed her.

But he had said nothing. Neither praise nor judgment.

Only studied her with a strange light in his eyes until the room had swelled and collapsed around them, echoing with her lies and his questions.

The waiting lawyer had finally cleared his throat and Leah had looked away.

After that day at the pool, Stavros and she had fallen into a surprising routine. Every evening, when he returned from work, he would come into her workroom and they would discuss his business and her work like two polite strangers reading from a script, carefully steering away from any number of topics.

And the elephant in the room, that sharp and growing awareness of each other, roamed free.

At least she had made a lot of progress in the week. And by the end of the day, her back hurt, her fingers ached, and she fell into bed exhausted.

To Leah, it felt like the calm before the storm. But she was determined to continue the peace for as long as he was determined to keep her future hanging in the balance.

So when he’d walked into her workroom yesterday morning, his skin tanned in the glorious Greek sun, and declared that she needed a break after a grueling week, she had readily assented, even if the thought of going away somewhere with him filled her with all kinds of tension.

Had not even blinked when he had told her that they would be attending a small party, would be staying away for a week and that he’d arranged a stylist for her.

He had stood there, as solid and magnificent as ever in a white shirt and tight jodhpurs and riding boots, sweaty and sexy and insanely real, waiting for her to argue and throw a fit.

She had rubbed a hand over her chest, as if she could appeal to her heart to stop its frenzied clamoring. Delusional really, that she still thought she could beg, force or control her body when it came to Stavros.

Did he hate how she dressed? The stinging question had come to her finally. But she had nodded and thanked him, like the dutiful Leah he wanted her to be.

So here she was, on his private jet this time, ensconced in sheer luxury. Thick cream carpet that swallowed her, spacious rear cabin with a huge king bed, and the man who was turning her inside out, as always.

Sighing, she locked her fingers in her lap when all she wanted was to sweep her fingers into the elaborate updo the stylist had twisted her hair into.

The weight of her thick hair piled into that unceremoniously tight knot pressed against the back of her head and neck. Tension piled into her shoulders.

When the stewardess arrived and inquired after her, she requested sparkling water and aspirin.

“You do not feel well,” he stated in that final tone of his.

In a movement that was as graceful as it was quick, he reached her side of the aircraft. His seat was not attached to hers yet he was far too close.

She remained stubbornly silent, determined to win the war against herself.

“You’ve been fidgeting uncontrollably for the past hour.”

“If I’m disturbing you, I—”

“Theos, Leah. For once, just answer my question.”

“I… I don’t like this hairstyle or this dress. They make me feel like…” Closing her eyes, she leaned back against her seat. God, she couldn’t have sounded like she was ten years old if she had tried harder.

“Like what?” his tone hovered between resigned amusement and curiosity.

She took the water and aspirin from the stewardess and swallowed it while it watched her.

“Answer me, Leah.”

Fighting the urge to burrow into herself like a turtle, she said, “I look like your version of me.”

“My version of…” He looked stunned. “Explain.”

“In this dress and jewelry, I am Leah Sporades, the demure and dutiful wife of respected billionaire Stavros Sporades. There’s nothing of me in this. It is all you.”

He froze and it seemed air and sound, the very matter around them froze along with him. “I do not understand.”

“That stylist you hired, she—” she forced herself to breathe “—this is what she presented me with.”

Frowning, he ran his gaze over the straps and over the tight ruffles of the bodice.

Her skin warmed up as if she was a flower and he was the very sun she craved. Leah tightened her fists to stop from covering herself.

He cleared his throat, his nostrils flaring. “I agree that it is not your usual…style.”

She nodded, wondering why she couldn’t have just shut her mouth. Why some stupid, irrational, brazen part of her always insisted on putting herself in his line of fire. Why, even as she hated his overbearing interference, she recklessly courted it.

“You are saying that this stylist, that someone in my staff picked, chose…this demure, dutiful little outfit,” he repeated her words, “based on how I want my wife to be presented to the world?”

“Yes.”

He lounged in his chair, his expression thoughtful. “Why did you give in then? You won’t even breathe air if it means following my orders.”

“You commanded an army to help me get dressed for a party. Like any sane person would, I assumed that you hate how I dress. Just as you hate how I breathe, talk and generally conduct my life.”

“I don’t hate how you dress. You do, somehow, own and wear the flimsiest articles of clothing of I have ever seen…”

“That is my style as a designer—light and dreamy bohemian pieces,” she sputtered, affronted.

“…and will probably expire either because of the sun or the cold one of these days, but you always look sexy and sophisticated.”

Little pinpricks of heat awoke all over and her gaze flew to his. He stared right back, as if daring her to challenge his accurate and somehow intimate observation of her style. Or maybe his right to comment on it.

The moment stretched and morphed into something else, a strange heat filling the cabin.

Accepting defeat under the thundering boom of her heart, Leah looked away. She cleared her throat and fingered the fabric of her dress.

“For all my sins, thee mou, I did not dictate how you should be dressed.”

She looked up. “Then she, like everyone else in the world, rightfully believes that you are ashamed of me and decided that her job was to make me somehow worthy of you.”

“Do not push me, yineka mou.” The glitter in his eyes pushed Leah into keeping mute. “Tell me why you relented, Leah.”

She looked away, squirming under his leisurely scrutiny. “I’m being dutiful, cooperative…”

The words trailed on her lips as he started laughing.

It swelled in the decadently silent cabin, crept inside her, filling every yearning space with itself. Scraped against her senses, like a physical thing meant to incite that relentless clamoring in every cell again.

“When you laugh, you almost look human,” she blurted out.

“As opposed to an alien?”

“As opposed to a man whom I’ve never seen to be anything but rigid, autocratic, and driven by duty and responsibility. When was the last time you did something because you wanted to do it and not because your lofty sense of morals said you should do it? Something that’s totally crazy but feels unbearably good? Something that devours you until you have it?”

Lazy interest flickered in his face. Little pinpricks of desire uncurled within her. “What and when was the last time you did something like that?”

Her throat dry, Leah licked her lips. “I ate half a cheesecake that Rosa baked for me last night. It was heavenly.”

That tawny gaze fell to her mouth. And lingered. “Wanting to do something with an utter madness is usually a sign of why you shouldn’t.”

Leah could very well imagine that mouth, beautifully carved and yet cruel, pressing on hers, could feel the liquid desire skitter across her skin.

“Living like that, with no thought to the future or the people around has lasting effects, pethi mou. It’s a choice that has consequences beyond one.”

“Like what?”

He shrugged, something shuttering in his expression.

“How is it that Dmitri and you are such close friends and he didn’t corrupt you at all?” Leah asked.

“Maybe I’m incorruptible.”

The cocky rise of his brows goaded her on. “Maybe,” her heart beat so loud, “the right temptation to corrupt you hasn’t come along.”

The challenge simmered in the air. But terrified as she was, Leah wouldn’t look away. Something about that hard, unyielding arrogance of his shattered her usual defenses, drove her to one risk after the other.

Being in his company made her forget all her fears, she realized with a staggering self-awareness.

Suddenly, he caught her hands and dragged her forward on the seat. Only his hands touched hers, and yet she was aware of every inch of her skin.

“You have been working all kinds of hours this week.”

“Don’t sound so surprised.” She searched for something to concentrate on instead of his tight clasp. “Anyway, so do you.”

“Yes, but mine is not grueling, backbreaking work like yours. Rosa tells me you take frequent breaks to stretch and run, so that’s good.” He turned her hands around in his, as if testing the weight and fit of them against his. Slowly resting them back in her lap.

“So you do admit that I know how to take care of myself?”

“I never disagreed that you have the faculty for that. Whether you choose to use it or not…” Uncharacteristic hesitation danced in his face. “Leah, I ordered an army because I thought you would enjoy being pampered for a day. Thought you would like dressing up, have a chance to catch up with others like you. You did say my estate was in the middle of nowhere.”

Warmth swelled in her chest and spilled over. Nothing she said to herself to contain it helped.

She was like the pathetically adorable little puppy that whimpered and promised forever for a little bit of attention and kindness.

Did she thank him for it or did she brazen it out with an inappropriate remark? In the end, she did neither. Just nodded and stood up, suddenly feeling caged in her own skin.

She wanted to, needed to, hate Stavros. And seeing this side of him was slowly but surely eroding the entire foundation of her life.

“What kind of party requires that we stay there for a week?”

“Katrakis Textiles is celebrating its fiftieth year anniversary. Tonight’s grand celebration is to honor everything Giannis has accomplished in the past fifty years. And then we will spend a week with him.”

Katrakis Textiles—Giannis’s legacy for Dmitri, Stavros and her. “I want no part of it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Trembling with panic, Leah locked her hands by her sides, the urge to pound at him rising again.

“I’m not lying about this. Dmitri and you are welcome to it. Now if you could please tell your pilot to turn around and head back to your estate—”

He didn’t even blink. “I won’t. Maybe I forgot to mention it, but this is one of the conditions you have to meet for your freedom, Leah.”

Her throat felt like it was made of glass. “You can’t do this.”

Rising from his seat, Stavros planted himself in her way. He frowned, taking in the trembling of her shoulders, the real flare of panic in her eyes. “Leah, what’s going on?”

Her chin tilted up, her gaze slowly focusing on him again. Jaw gritting, she squared her shoulders. “I don’t want anything to do with Giannis or his legacy. He…rejected my mom without looking back just because she fell in love with my dad. He didn’t even come when she died, he never accepted my dad.”

“He was heartbroken that he had driven your mother away, Leah. And she…she was just as stubborn as him.”

“He loved you and Dmitri more than he ever loved her or me. He took me in because he had no choice after my dad died.”

“He tried to make amends for his mistakes.”

Leah shook her head, forcing the words to come. “He did what he failed to do with my mom, to me. He…he ruined my life by bringing you into it. He took away my freedom by forcing you to marry me.”

“He did not force me, Leah. I owed him everything in my life. I would have made any sacrifice he…”

She recoiled from him as if he had struck her.

Christos! She was a complex puzzle he would need to spend a lifetime to understand.

Beneath the reckless defiance, beneath her constant animosity for him, did Leah want his approval?

“Of course,” she said, her voice trembling. “The great Giannis Katrakis who’s made kings of his godsons, plucked them from poverty and obscurity…and the honorable Stavros Sporades who would do anything for him, to the point of marrying his obnoxious granddaughter…and whose life has been ruined by it?

Mine.

“I’m not an instrument in achieving redemption for Giannis or for you to show your gratitude.”

“You don’t understand how much he longs to—”

“And you do? You understand feelings and fears, Stavros? Even Calista’s death…all it means to you is a failure…Do you ever miss her? Did she ever mean anything to you other than being a responsibility?”

Tight grooves appeared by his mouth, his stunning face white beneath his dark skin. He looked haunted. “I took care of her since she was a crawling toddler. I—”

“You took care of her, you protected her, you bought her clothes and jewelry, but did you ever love her? Does Giannis mean anything to you other than a debt to repay? Am I anything but a penance for your supposed failure? God, it’s like your heart is nothing but stone.”

Pure fury wreathed his features and yet, he didn’t scare Leah. All she wanted was to hurt him for pushing her to this.

First her father, then Calista—they had left her shattered, inconsolable, alone. Yet, somehow she had managed, she had found something she loved and started pouring her heart and soul into it.

She couldn’t risk getting attached to her grandfather, she couldn’t survive another loss.

“Everything you have ever done has been self-serving, and you dare to question me?” he shot back.

“Yes, I dare. You have no fears, no doubts, nothing that holds you back from what you think is right. Don’t pretend like he means something to you.”

“Giannis is the father I never had. He’s been a better mother to me than the one who walked out on us. He has been my family, my friend; he’s everything to me. He came for me based on a small promise my drunkard father roped him into making for some age-old village tradition. If he hadn’t kept his word, I wouldn’t have known kindness or honor. I would have spent my life in poverty and misery. So yes, I would do anything if it means it would bring a smile to his face.”

His outburst stunned Leah, the ache in those words irrefutable, rendering her bitter accusations a lie. That he had suffered neglect at the hands of his parents, that there was so much depth to his determination toward his duty, it shook her from within.

The silence rang with his fury, his movements caged and restless.

He ran a hand over his eyes and exhaled, suddenly looking extremely tired. A haunted look wreathed his features. “I don’t care if you think he ruined your life. All he ever intended was to keep you safe, even from yourself.

“So you will not only act how Giannis Katrakis’s granddaughter and heiress should tonight, you will also spend the next few days with him, and you will tell him how grateful you are for everything.

“If you know what’s good for you, and I think that is one thing you know very well, you will obey me.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

LEAH LOOKED OUT from the huge balcony that gave a view of the lush acreage surrounding her grandfather’s house.

The estate was covered with huge marquees. Multicolored fountains were lit up in the grounds, buffet tables groaning under the weight of delicacies and dishes. Soft music filtered from unobtrusive speakers nearer the house.

Laughter and greetings in Greek floated up from the crowd of two hundred or more guests, piercing through the melancholy that gripped her. In the half hour or so she had spent down there, she had only heard goodwill for Giannis and praise for Stavros and Dmitri.

It seemed her grandfather couldn’t have chosen better men to continue his legacy. She was the outsider, the curiosity, the unknown, and being among people who had known her mother, the fact hurt. Yet she had no one but herself to blame.

When she had stepped out of the limo on Stavros’s arm, it was as if the entire world had come to a standstill. Thundering silence had reigned as she had walked through the parting crowd, her gaze both searching for and bracing for the sight of her grandfather.

He’s taking a break, Stavros whispered in her ear and her breath left her in a ball. Her knees would have buckled beneath her if he hadn’t held her up against his solid frame.

An hour later, here she was waiting for Giannis, everything she had done over the past decade rushing up toward her.

She hadn’t been in her grandfather’s house for almost eight years now, having chosen to live with Calista at Stavros’s house even before he had tied her to him. The grand house was as lifeless as Stavros’s house had been full of peace.

Her grandfather had been so open and loving of her when Stavros had brought her home. Just fifteen, she had been grief-stricken, too shattered by her father’s sudden death to respond to Giannis with anything more than single-word responses. But he hadn’t given up on her. He had bid Stavros to bring Calista along next time. And just as he had predicted, Calista had been a welcome storm in her life—fun, reckless, daring, and somehow, she had understood Leah’s grief.

Except Leah had never imagined it would be Calista that she would lose.

Crippled by Calista’s loss, stunned by Stavros’s decision, she had refused to even look at Giannis. If she didn’t love him, if she didn’t hug him as her arms sometimes ached to, if she didn’t pin all her love on her kind grandfather who told her thrilling tales about a mother she had never known, she wouldn’t have to live through another loss.

If she didn’t love him, there would be no pain when he was gone. Even when Giannis had recovered from his heart attack, she had refused to see him.

Stavros was right. She had truly become selfish. A coward who cared about nothing but protecting herself from pain.

Something broke her reverie and she turned around.

Stavros standing slightly behind him, for support she knew, her grandfather stood under the archway, his brown eyes hungrily studying her. “Come close so I can see you.” His voice, soft and coarse, reverberated in the stillness. Tugged as though by invisible cords, she took a few steps. Her heart thudded in her chest.

“You look so much more like her now, so much like my beautiful Ioanthe. Welcome home, Leah.”

And just like that, every defense she had put in place, every wall she had erected around her heart, came tumbling down.

Tears overflowing onto her cheeks, half blinded by the emotion engulfing her, Leah stumbled toward him. Wrapped her arms around him with no regard to his frail body, with no thought other than to lose herself in his unconditional acceptance. On the periphery, she heard Stavros’s soft curse.

Giannis was so thin and insubstantial that if not for Stavros anchoring them, she knew she would have toppled them down. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, a haunting void in her gut.

How cowardly she had been to deny herself his embrace, his love?

Her grandfather held her with a tight grip. The remembered pine scent of him made her tremble. “Shhh…do not cry, thee mou.”

When she became aware of her surroundings again, Giannis was sitting in a chair and she was kneeling in front of him, the stone floor digging into her knees. Overwhelmed by shame and grief, she hid her face in his knees while he kept his hand over her head, whispering endearments. Even in the turmoil she was in, she knew Stavros had left them alone. Breathing loudly, she swiped her fingers over her cheeks and looked up.

“I’m a coward. All I ever cared about was protecting myself.”

He shook his head and smiled, tucking her hand into his. “You are here now.”

She wouldn’t be if not for Stavros. But with all her old fears swirling beneath the joy of seeing her grandfather, Leah couldn’t be grateful to Stavros. Not yet.

Leah’s soft cries haunted Stavros as he paced room after room, trying to find her. More than two hours had passed since he had left her with Giannis and rejoined the party, his thoughts in a whirl.

When Giannis had brought him to this very mansion years ago, it had taken him a month to learn the layout of the house. Now he cursed it.

His nurse had just informed him that Giannis had returned to his bedroom an hour ago. Which meant Leah could be anywhere.

A sense of failure haunted him, a gnawing in his gut just as in the days after Calista had died. Had he pushed her too far tonight? Why had she cried as though her heart had been breaking?

Her reaction to seeing Giannis shook Stavros on levels he couldn’t grasp.

He finally found her in the dark music room, a shadow sitting in silence. Ioanthe used to play piano here, he remembered Giannis telling him fondly.

Stepping inside, he flicked the switch on and light from the overhead crystal chandelier flooded the room.

His chest swelled with a sudden surge of emotion as his gaze found her on the chaise longue, her legs tucked under her, her dress billowing around her.

“I wouldn’t comment on the wine bottle, or my dress or how I live my life just now, Stavros.” She flicked him a wary glance, guilty color streaking her cheeks. A bottle of red wine sat on the vanity table, a half empty glass in her hand. “I’m painfully alive, so that should be good enough for you.”

His breath came out in shuddering exhale, old fear lurking just beneath the surface.

Her hair had come undone from the severe style she hadn’t liked, framing her face in disarray. Her eyes looked a little swollen and that laughing, mocking, sensuous mouth was pinched at the corners. Face scrubbed of makeup and huddled against the dark red upholstery, she looked achingly innocent, and lonely. And afraid, he thought frowning.

“Are you hiding from me, Leah?”

Her sigh rattled in the silence. “Would it help my case if I said I was?”

Irritation flickered inside him. Couldn’t she tell him even such a tiny truth?

Even the proper, demure dress had lost its war against her. Crumpled and stained at the hem where she must have been kneeling while one strap hung half down her arm, it bared her neck and the upper swell of one breast. The diamond choker glittered against her slender throat.

A relentless peal of hunger began to simmer through him. His fingers itched to trace that delicate collarbone, his mouth tingling to press against the pulse hammering at the base of her throat.

But even as desire ran rampant in his veins, it was the underlying thread of tenderness that unsettled him. He should have been happy that she had done as he had asked, that she hadn’t hurt Giannis as she had…hurt him? Wounded him?

You are made of stone.

How had her words found such purchase in him? Another new awareness that only Leah could elicit, another new territory that she pushed him into…

Theos, what was wrong with him?

Tucking his hands in the pockets of his trousers, he leaned against the doorway.

“You don’t look like my version of you anymore. You look like…you. Even that dress…I think you have bent it to your will, Leah.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” she said, sounding anything but. “Aren’t you done pulling my strings tonight?”

The dare in her tone would have made him smile if he could have believed it completely. If he hadn’t heard the quiver she worked hard to suppress. If he hadn’t seen such ache and longing ravage her fragile face when she had seen Giannis.

Still, he played along, unsure of her mood. Even more dangerous, unsure of his own intentions. “Have you still not learned not to challenge me, Leah?”

She looked down into her drink and he had a feeling she wanted to hide from him. That she didn’t want him to see her like this at all.

“I’m telling you to leave me alone, Stavros.” She confirmed his suspicions. “I’m telling you that I feel as reckless and deranged as you have always called me. I’m telling you to not dissect my actions today and pronounce judgment.”

Even as her tone rose, she still didn’t meet his eyes.

Had he made it so hard for her to show him anything but that selfish facade? Was he truly such an unfeeling monster then?

Had he always been like that?

He had worked so hard at his grandfather’s small farm, trying to pitch in for his father’s negligence, afraid that they would throw Calista and him out on the streets.

He remembered a strange calm the night his grandmother had said his mother wasn’t coming back; he remembered not shedding even a tear when he had found out that his father was dead. All he had thought of even that day was how he would shield Calista from it.

For as far back as he could remember, it had been about the little girl that had followed him around from the moment she had been able to walk, hugging him, kissing him, and coming to him with tears when she had a bruise, knocking the breath out of him.

She had had such trust in her eyes that he hadn’t known, literally, what to do with it. Hadn’t known how to return those hugs, hadn’t known what he could say to her. So instead he had done what he could.

He had protected her, provided her with everything he possibly—

Theos, no!

The thought that had always brought such comfort to him now flayed him, digging in, making him flinch in pain.

Do you actually miss Calista? Did you ever love her?

Had Leah been right in her cruel judgment of his feelings for Calista too?

After he had lost Calista, he had felt angry, confused, unbalanced. His failure poisoned his very thoughts, so he shoved them away and focused on his actions instead.

Protecting Leah, and punishing himself and her, had provided him with perverse relief.

Now, her words taking root inside him, he felt raw.

He should leave her, every instinct warned him. He should walk away when all she was capable of was piercing him with her acerbic words. He should be done with her, set her free and not look back.

And yet, he couldn’t have walked away if his very breath had depended on it.

Beneath his duty toward Giannis and his sense of responsibility toward her, even beneath his unnerving attraction to her, something very strange had begun to flutter in him for Leah.

He was in awe of that feeling as much as he was wary of it.

“What else do you intend to put me through in this test of yours, Stavros?”

Everything about what he had seen tonight troubled him. “Leah, was your hatred of me reason enough to keep away from Giannis?”

The wariness slowly dissipated as she held his gaze and finished her drink. Something new dawned in her glittering gaze—a satisfaction, and his breath rattled. One long leg stretching in front of her, her stance loosened. Her slender shoulders squared, her nostrils flared.

“I would let you think that if I thought it would hurt you. I would do anything right this moment if I thought it would make you bleed.”

He found himself walking toward her, found himself straddling the lounger to face her. It was as though the combination of pain and fury in her eyes tugged at him.

She looked glorious, infinitely breathtaking.

She had already somehow pierced him, the truth lingered on his lips. The thought of that vulnerability, of sharing that much with her made his gut clench.

Clasping her cheek, he lifted her to face him, his pulse pounding in his veins. The sound of her sharp breath was like a balm to him. “Are you so thirsty for my blood then, pethi mou?”

“Yes.”

Her resounding answer sent a shiver through to his very bones. It was as though seeing Giannis had peeled off that facade of hers.

“Are you satisfied, Stavros? Have I risen in my worthiness in your eyes?”

The thunderous roar of his heart, the curling heat in his muscles made it harder for him to whisper the one question that had been battering at him all day. He felt as if a huge truth was within his grasp, as if the real Leah was within his reach. And in that moment, he would do anything to have it.

To have her, to know her, to feel her…

If he had her, would the strange turmoil inside him stop?

“When has my opinion of you begun to matter, Leah?” he whispered softly, the words burning on his lips.

He felt her instant recoil in the stillness of her form, in the way the very air around her seemed to suspend and freeze.

A violent energy burst from her limbs. Lifting the hem of that heavy, voluminous dress away from her legs, she faced him. A flash of a toned thigh met his gaze and he looked away guiltily, the depth of his hunger for her shredding his control.

Her hair whipped around her face, the swish of her dress adding to the harsh exhales of her breath.

The uncaring mask back in place, she mocked him with that practiced glare in her eyes, with that biting edge to her tone. By hiding from him what he so desperately wanted to see.

“You know what, Stavros? Scratch that answer. I don’t care whether I could hurt you or not. I don’t give a damn about you. I did what you asked of me, I made sure Giannis is happy. I played the part of an heiress and his loving granddaughter to the hilt. Which means I’m one step closer to achieving my freedom. That’s what I care about.

“Tell me what will make the next month go faster so that I can see the back of you. Tell me what is next so that I never have to talk to you ever again.”

A dangerous fire burst in his belly.

How dare she put on this mask again? How dare she deny him even the merest hint of the real her? How dare she sink under his skin and yet deny him the same satisfaction?

How dare she turn him into this man teetering on the edge of his control, and walk away so blithely?

Before she could get to her feet and escape, because he had no doubt that she was about to escape, he clasped her wrist and tugged her down.

She fell onto her haunches, her shoulders knocking against his chest. For the first time in his life, Stavros gave in to every irrational urge, every desperate want. “What are you afraid of, Leah? Me or yourself?” he taunted.

Primal satisfaction pounded through him, the increasing frenzy of her movements telling him he had hit the mark. “I’m not afraid of you,” she said, twisting her upper body to get away from him. Ended up torturing him further with the slide of her body against his.

“Then face me, Leah,” he whispered, driven by some reckless urge to prove that his opinion mattered to her, that he mattered to her.

Just as she was beginning to matter to him…

She couldn’t let him touch her, she couldn’t let him kiss her.

If she let him touch her tonight, if she let him hold her tonight, something inside her would break. She would pour out the whole wretched truth, she would blurt how lonely she had been…

If she let him see the real her, she would have no shield, no armor against him. And even in the fragility of her emotions, Leah knew she couldn’t let Stavros close.

“Why are you acting like this?”

Her arms ached with the effort it took to hold herself so stiffly in the circle of his body; every inch of her hurt to stay unaffected in the warmth of his rough embrace.

“Like a man acts with his wife?”

She fought back stupidly hot tears, knowing that she didn’t stand a chance against that claim.

When she pushed against his wrists again, he grabbed her hands this time. Laced her fingers through his and pulled her forward. Her hip touched his rock-hard thigh and she bit down on her lip.

Giving up her struggle, she leaned her forehead against his shoulder. “What do you want from me?”

“All I’ve ever wanted is the truth, pethi mou.” His fingers circled her nape with a possessively delicate touch. Her heart thudded as if it would thunder out of her chest as she raised her head. Molten heat filled his eyes. “But you won’t give me that. So, I will claim what I can of you.”

Somehow she shook her head, even mesmerized by how low and silky he sounded, by how astonishingly expressive his face was.

How had she always seen only one facet of Stavros?

There were so many sensations—the rough texture of his hands against hers, his bruising grip on her wrists, the sudden heaviness of her breasts as they jutted against him, the beckoning hardness of his thighs against her hips—she should have expired from so much sensory input. It was as though her body was one pealing, pulsing mass of sensation…

He was everything she ever wanted and yet she couldn’t give in. “I don’t want this. I…”

“In this, you’re not a good liar.” He placed a finger on the pulse at her neck, feral satisfaction filling his gaze. “Your pulse betrays you…your darkening eyes betray you.” With every word he said, his accent became thicker, her breaths came faster. “Even your mouth betrays you…” His long fingers framed her cheeks, pulling her closer.

Her hips nudged his thighs apart, and the hottest sensation zigzagged through her. His thighs were so hard and powerful, his touch possessive and potent.

How was she supposed to resist him when he looked at her like that?

“I will not be your wife soon. I won’t—”

He smiled then, and the sinful curve of his mouth, the dark laughter in his eyes undid the last layer of her willpower. “Now, tonight, in this moment, you’re still mine, yineka mou. One kiss for all the trouble you have caused me, Leah, one kiss for everything you deny me…”

He had turned her life upside down, and now he was doing the same to her heart.

Even as he staked his claim, he didn’t take the kiss. Long lashes hiding his gaze, his arm around her waist a heavy weight, he paused. But sinking under a deluge of emotions, Leah stared, transfixed, at the bow shape of his leanly sculpted mouth, felt need trump every fear.

Covering the last millimeter, she pressed her mouth to his. His savage growl shocked her as much as the incinerating texture of his lips…

His mouth was hot and hard, and a million sparks exploded under her skin.

With erotic strokes, he left her no air to breathe, gave her no room to think. Sensation exploded as he slanted his lips this way and that, his fingers in her hair holding her immobile for him. Teeth bit into her lower lip and punished. When she moaned, he softly blew at the spot before nipping again.

One hand slid over her hips, moved possessively over to her buttocks and then pulled her closer until she was straddling him. But not close enough for her to feel the part of him that she wanted to…

Even that, he controlled.

Her breasts felt full and aching as he crushed her against the wall of his chest with a palm at the base of her back. She panted, her breath balling up in her throat. Trembling, she ran her fingers over her mouth, and her cheek where his stubble had scratched her skin.

That mouth that could lacerate her with words, God, it could weave such erotic magic…those hands that had dumped cold water on her, they could evoke such heat in her; the cradle of his arms, it made her feel so alive…

He didn’t kiss softly, he didn’t seduce, he didn’t cajole.

He wrung the response out of her as he did everything else with her. Impinging his will on her senses, imprinting his hard muscles over her soft ones… The way he ruled her life, the way he decided what she needed.

She could have spent the next hundred years wedged against his hardness, lost in his kiss, delirious with the pleasure he brought her. But not let him tell her what she needed, not accept what he deigned to give her.

No!

In that, she couldn’t let him decide her fate, couldn’t let fear rule her.

Determined to give him a fight, determined to demand her due, she pulled her mouth away from his, trailed it along that hard jawline, buried it in the crook of his neck. Tasted the salty tang of his skin. An insistent pull began at her sex, and she moaned against his bristly jaw.

His grip loosened in her hair, his other hand loosely anchoring her against him as she caressed him roughly, learned every muscle and sinew.

She touched him everywhere, reveling in the tensile hardness of him. Traced up his rock-hard thighs, up toward his groin. And her palm found his erection—hard and long and so utterly arousing… Her breath jerked in her throat.

She had done this to Stavros. The harsh rhythm of his breath in her ears, that incredible stillness of him around her…

Goaded by a clamoring instinct, she shaped him with her palm, moved her finger down the length of him, a shiver spewing in her own muscles.

A guttural sound fell from his lips as he bucked against her hand. It lasted an infinitesimal breath but she knew he had almost surrendered then, that he had lost his rules, his very control then.

Only a second but it was still a victory.

He clasped her wrist in a vise-like grip. She looked up at him and smiled, feeling dazedly powerful, painfully glorious.

In this moment, with him…any pain would have been worth it.

Dark color filled his cheeks, his gaze haunted, agonized. “Why do you push me to the very edge, Leah?” His accent was coarse and uneven as he breathed the words into her temple. “Why do you fight me, deny me every step of the way?”

“Did you not like how I responded, Stavros?” she said shivering, and for a second, he clasped her in his warmth. If he had showed her tenderness…no, this was better. “You forced me to…to respond, just as you force me into everything. That kiss was about domination, not desire, not about taking tenderness.”

He studied her, his own gaze curiously empty. “And if I had asked?” Shaking his head, he stepped away from her. As if he didn’t want her answer. When he met her gaze again, his expression was shuttered. “You’re not wearing your ring.”

“It’s somewhere in my jewelry.”

“As long as you’re still bound to me, you will wear it.”

She stared in stunned silence.

“It would please Giannis too. And that matters to you, doesn’t it, Leah? So I don’t have to worry that you would talk about our little deal with him.”

“And when I’m…when I win our deal?” she forced the words out through the knot in her throat. That she would never see him again was like a lead weight in her chest.

“You will not abandon him, I know that.” Retribution, if she did, rang in his tone. “And I will continue to take care of the one man who means the world to me.”

Stavros left Leah without looking back, the image of her swollen mouth and dazed eyes burned into his brain forever. If he stayed another minute, he didn’t know what he would do.

He was unknown to himself the way he had reached for her, the way he craved her. In that moment, he had so desperately needed to claim something of her. Shuddering with frustrated desire, he wondered if she had given him anything that he hadn’t taken, wondered why it mattered so much, now.

One of these days, he would be releasing her from their marriage. He knew it as surely as the taste of her still floated on his lips.

Yet, instead of anticipating his freedom, all he suddenly knew was a keen urgency.

To understand Leah, to steal a part of her for himself even as she denied him.

CHAPTER NINE

WHY HAD HE kissed her?

The question haunted Leah endlessly.

What had driven her into giving in so easily?

If she closed her eyes, she could still hear his harsh breath, his softly spoken words…

Her fingers shook and her scissors slipped on the fabric. With a frustrated cry, Leah threw the scissors across the room and fingered the silk gently.

The sheer tulle she was cutting for the underskirt of the wedding gown was the most expensive fabric that she had ordered for her collection. At least, the amount of cloth she had ruined was minimal.

Carefully, she folded the fabric and tucked the tissue wrapping around it. She wasn’t going to get anything that needed focus done today.

More than a week had passed since the night of the party. The next evening, Stavros had left. She had had a feeling he had left because of the kiss.

There was something new—an intensity to his gaze now when he looked at her.

Walking to the rack, she took a cocktail dress in deep red. Threading the needle, she sat down on the couch and began piping the hem.

She was glad she had persuaded Stavros to have most of her materials packed and sent to her grandfather’s estate. Her grandfather tired easily and without her work to keep her busy, she would have driven herself mad thinking of Stavros the whole time.

The sheer arrogance of the man, the clinical coldness with which he had made her respond—she had whimpered like a dog, for God’s sake… Even that couldn’t stop her from trembling every time she remembered the feel of his rough mouth, the bite of his teeth into her lower lip, the way his large hands skimmed and molded her body…

It had been her first kiss and it had been an exercise in… What? A war of wills? A balm to his ego? Or had he been as powerless as her?

Frustration carved through her.

She wanted to hate him, she did hate him for that cold resolve…but he also made her feel so alive. Lost in his kiss, drowning in his arms, there had been no place for fear, no place for hiding.

Nothing but living…

When he looked at her with such glittering desire in his tawny eyes, when he looked at her as if she could unlock something inside him…it was so easy to believe that he saw her as an equal.

Which was the stupidest thing ever given that he was with his lover in Athens attending a charity event right now… He was probably back in her bed too, she thought nastily and gasped as she pricked her finger with the needle.

The good thing was how much work she had gotten done and the time she had spent with Giannis.

After an excruciating couple of days, Giannis had finally taken pity on her and asked her to show him a dress from her collection. He had pronounced her dress beautiful and her, an extremely talented designer who would take the fashion industry by storm. Making dresses was in their blood, he had said with pride. While his praise had been extravagantly effusive, it had still filled her with warmth.

So every day, she took breakfast and lunch with him, then accompanied him on a short walk around the house. Sometimes, they played a board game that he taught her, and sometimes, they discussed her designs. They carefully kept away from talking about Stavros and the state of her marriage.

After being afraid for so long, after training herself to not get attached to him, forming such a strong emotional bond should have been hard to do in just a few days. But spending one of those yawningly long Greek afternoons chatting with Giannis, or just sitting together in comfortable silence, or the times he would nap and she would sit with her sketchpad on the back terrace, had become incredibly precious to her.

Her grandfather was irreverent, naughty, and kind.

As the sweltering days gave way to cooler nights, her fears melted away and like the leaves slowly changing color, an incredible sense of joy pervaded her. It was so alien that she had taken to staring at herself in the mirror, wondering if it made her look different.

As her cell phone chirped, she realized it was time for lunch with Giannis.

The time that Stavros had stipulated she spend with Giannis was rapidly coming to an end, and suddenly, saying goodbye to her grandfather, even temporarily, was the last thing Leah wanted to do.

Stavros was avoiding her, she knew as surely as her heart thumped when he called every evening and asked about Giannis.

Something had changed between them that night, whether for good or bad, she didn’t know.

Her footsteps clicking on the outer courtyard, Leah sighed. She could hate him all she wanted for forcing her to this, but she wouldn’t have had this wonderful week with Giannis if not for him.

Leah joined Giannis at the table laid out on the back patio that offered an unending view of the shoreline. The raised porch provided shade from the Greek sun. Reaching Giannis, she kissed his papery cheek and sat down.

The small table groaned under the weight of a colorful and mouthwatering array of dishes. “I didn’t know that we were having a feast today,” she said, spreading her napkin on her lap. “I would have skipped breakfast and run a few more miles.”

“Eat,” Giannis said. “No man likes his woman so thin that it could hurt him if he embraces her.”

Popping a piece of a juicy, thick-crusted pie into her mouth, Leah shook her head. “Since no man is actually intent on embracing or otherwise expressing love for your granddaughter,” she continued in that same irreverent tone, “no worries there.”

It had become a bit of a game this past week between them, about who could say the most outrageous thing. The smile disappeared from Giannis’s face. “He is your husband, child. Are you denying him rights?”

Leah coughed, choking on the flaky piece of pastry. Recovering, she took a sip of frosty lemonade. “I don’t want to ruin the afternoon by talking about it.”

“Your mother is gone. Calista is gone. I learn from Stavros that you keep to yourself. Maybe talking to an old man will help, ne?”

His overtly sweet tone made her smile. “I do not want to talk about his rights, or how subservient I have to be because I’m his wife, grandfather.”

“You want a modern marriage. I understand. But I have concern for you. You are very lonely. I see it in your eyes.”

She was lonely, she had been for so many years now. That’s why she had capitulated so easily to Stavros’s touch.

She could almost fool herself into believing that.

“Leah?”

Leah didn’t have the heart to push his concern away. It was so strange that she couldn’t be angry with Giannis when he was the one who gave Stavros all the power over her, yet she could hold a grudge against Stavros himself.

Somewhere along the line, it had become a shield, she realized. A shield that was slowly beginning to get holes. That’s what had changed.

Her grandfather clutched her fingers and she returned the pressure, feeling a sudden thickness in her throat.

“What Stavros and I have…it’s too complicated. How can I think of him as my husband or anything else respectful for that matter if he continues to treat me like a child?”

“It is his nature to protect the people he considers close.”

I’m not close to him, the juvenile taunt rose to her lips.

She didn’t care that she wasn’t, she decided resolutely.

“I have a feeling that’s all he knows how to do. He…I have never seen him laugh, never need anyone. Never seen him vulnerable.” And yet, he had looked so different that night they kissed, almost vulnerable…to her touch, to her words even. “He was probably born fully formed with a set of rules about how life should be lived, in his hand.”

Something flickered in Giannis’s gaze and Leah swallowed the rest of her words. “Stavros does not ask, or take anything for himself. Only gives.”

There was such truth in her grandfather’s words that Leah stilled. She had never seen him ask, or demand anything for himself. It had only ever been about her, or Calista or Giannis, or even Dmitri sometimes. But never about himself.

Still grappling with that, she made her voice casual and gripey again. “For all I know, he does not need anything like normal people do. He will probably order the cook to not serve me if he learned I eat my dessert first.”

A twinkle appeared in Giannis’s eyes. “You speak like this to him?”

When she nodded, he laughed, the flimsy sound bursting out of him. It shook his frail frame, and alarm crashed through her. Sensing her anxiety, he sobered. “Laughing with you is good for me. I still believe in the rightness of your marriage. You are precisely what Stavros needs in his life. And you—” something too close to the truth lingered in his eyes “—him. I wish you would give it a real try. You will find him to be an honorable man.”

Beneath his rigidness, beneath his tunnel view of the world, she hated to admit, Stavros’s actions had always been driven by good intentions.

What would it be like to trust him with her fears? What would it be like to give herself over to him? To really give their relationship a try? To be the woman he shared himself with?

Feigning a nonchalance she was far from feeling, she looked at Giannis, who watched her curiously. She had seen the questions in his eyes, had seen him hesitate. And suddenly, she couldn’t bear to go away with Giannis not knowing the truth.

Abandoning her food, she clasped his hand. “I didn’t take drugs that night. I have never touched that stuff in my life. I know I have pained you but I…”

A catch in her throat, she pinned her forehead to his hand.

How could she put her irrational fear into words?

The sound of a soft tread, the way her skin prickled, she instantly knew.

Without turning, she let go of Giannis’s hand and leaned back in her seat.

Stavros was back.

He believed her.

The realization stopped Stavros in his tracks. As powerful as the sun beating down on him, as simple as the feeling in his gut.

Just as she would never have gone to the media with her story, would never have dragged Giannis and him into a dirty scandal to facilitate a divorce.

She had been bluffing that day.

And he had fallen for it.

He had believed every lie Leah had ever told him, had spun his own theory of how she had led Calista astray, that, somehow, she had convinced his naive sister to try something dangerous…

But if Leah hadn’t been the one that had pushed Calista to it, then what had happened? That Leah had lived while Calista had died of a drug overdose that night, he had chalked it up to pure chance.

But it wasn’t.

Whatever choice she had made that night, his sister had made it of her own accord.

His head pounded with the questions it let loose; his entire world tilted.

Had he not really known Calista either?

“Come, Stavros,” Giannis beckoned him with a smile before he could disappear with his shifting thoughts.

Stavros looked up, zeroing in on Leah with a stinging hunger.

On her way to the other side of the table, she stilled without looking at him. Her fingers slipped on the serving spoon, the sound clanging in the patio.

Slowly, she moved her head and met his gaze. The impact of it rocked through him, the picture she presented ripping through the semblance of control he had fooled himself into achieving over the past four days.

An off-shoulder, black, cutoff blouse showed a strip of her back, indented by the line of her spine, an outlandish article of clothing if he had ever seen one, and yet it suited her to perfection, with the long, gray skirt that billowed around her legs.

A soft breeze pushed it against her legs, outlining the lean, toned length of them.

Heat thrummed in every pore, his arousal painfully instantaneous.

He wanted to see if she was just as silky everywhere, he wanted to see that glorious hair, right now piled atop her head and falling from it, spread against his pillows, he wanted to feel that mouth against every inch of him…

Leah affected him like no other woman ever did, or could. Whether it was because she was his wife or because she was inherently Leah—beautiful, demanding, lively—he wouldn’t know.

All he knew was that she was destroying every assumption he had made of her, inching toward her goal, once again, changing his life irrevocably.

But he couldn’t let her go, not until he knew the truth about Calista. Not until he knew everything there was to know about Leah.

Not until he had tasted that luscious mouth one more time.

Just this once, he would reach for what he wanted, he would take what he craved and damn his sense of duty.

The strangest expression glittered in Stavros’s eyes. Her gaze followed the corded length of his thighs as he chose the chair wedged against hers. The memory of how hard and welcoming he had been beneath her suffused her face with warmth. Hoping they would think it was the sun, she smiled pleasantly for Giannis’s benefit.

Giannis slowly got up from his chair, and both Stavros and she rose from theirs. Grabbing his walking stick, he waved them off. “It is time for me to rest. You both sit,” he said with such a teasing twinkle in his eyes that Leah sighed like a deflated balloon.

How would Giannis face it when Stavros finally set her free? Would Stavros tell him?

The moment Giannis was out of sight, she stood up too, the very joy she had found this morning evaporating under her own conflicting emotions.

His fingers clamping her wrist, Stavros looked up. “Stay, Leah…please.”

The edgy request warned her not to argue.

Increasingly aware of the high-pitched chirp of a bird in the olive groves, the rustle of leaves, and the painful thud of her own heart, she studied him under the guise of bravely facing him.

As always, he was dressed in formal clothes but the shirt was unbuttoned, and his hair looked like he had messed it up quite a bit.

From the arch of his eyebrows to the straight line of his nose, from the way his mouth tilted up on one side when he smiled to the blunt nails of his long fingers, he was painfully familiar to her now…a desperate longing awoke in her, to trace that austere face, to taste him in tenderness, to just once meet him as his equal without lies and fears.

“How is your collection coming along?”

Blinking, she searched for an answer. “Very well. I finalized the design on the last dress. I’m terrified that it might not be as breathtaking as I think it is.”

“The wedding gown?”

The smile came naturally then. “Yes. I have to do the cutting on it. I’ve been taking the fabric, laying it all out and then just staring at it for hours… I can’t afford to…”

“You’re nervous?” he said with such genuine warmth that she flushed.

“It’s the prize of my collection but it means so much more to me. A wedding dress, as much as it has become a symbol of status and wealth and showing off in these days, it means a lot to a woman, right? It’s the one day she gets to be what she longs to be all her life.”

Somehow, he had moved closer to her. Her hand lay in his loosely, the pad of his thumb tracing the top of it gently. “What is that?”

“Beautiful, special, loved.” Pulling her hand away from him, she smiled to herself. “No matter what age, that day, she is the center of the whole universe for this one man…that day, it’s a new beginning, a fresh start, a promise she cherishes that her life will hold meaning to someone else. It’s the first day of a whole new way of life, of the most important, intimate relationship she’s ever going to have…and the wedding dress… it symbolizes all those hopes and dreams she’s ever cherished.”

Sensing his stillness, she turned and saw the lacerating pity in his eyes.

It was like the most vulnerable part of her, the part she even hid from herself, had been ripped open.

Shutting her eyes to stop the heat building behind, she saw what he remembered.

She had married in a ghastly cream silk dress that had been too tight on her chubby body. With a stone-faced Dmitri as witness while Giannis lay in a hospital bed. Drowning in guilt over Calista, numb that she always seemed to be saying goodbye to loved ones, terrified about what Stavros intended, and hating herself…

That bleary day had been about punishment and penance, about duty and fear. Just as the moment after when he had pressed his mouth to hers, had been.

Even then she had been eager for his kiss, had clung to him in her shame when he had put her away from him, and wiped his mouth.

“At least, that’s the statement I want this collection to make, you know.” Her blasted voice wouldn’t stop quivering. “Like you said, it’s a career saturated with so many fresh faces that you can disappear in a second… You have to be able to put a new spin on your collection, present it almost like a story so that your consumers will fall in love with it, and that’s how—”

Clasping her chin, he turned her toward him. From casual to a vehement intensity, his expression changed in mere seconds. “Don’t, agape mou.”

Still, she tried to pretend. “You probably find this intensely boring.”

“Do I not deserve the truth even in this, Leah?” Resting on his haunches in front of her seat, he took her hand in his. The tenderness in his gaze unraveled her defenses. “Do not lie about something that is so important to you, do not cheapen what truly comes from your heart. Not this…”

“I…”

“Did you once dream like this too? Was marriage that important to you?”

Her throat raw, she nodded. “I believed in the sanctity of it once, yes. My father…I never knew my mother and I always used to get this sense that a part of him was gone with her. He loved me but his heart…it was with her. When you grow up seeing love like that, you believe in its power. You start hoping for it even when you know…” She shrugged, loath to betray herself even more.

“I’m sorry for ruining your dreams, Leah,” he said with such withdrawal, that it was Leah who held onto him this time. “You were a dangerous combination of recklessness and… I had to protect you from fortune hunters and—”

“Myself, of course.” But there was no real bite to her words.

She could not lie and absolve him of any of it. Despite wanting to hate him, she even understood why he had done it, but his apology touched something inside her. “I wanted a lot of things. But life happened. I’ll be fine, Stavros.”

He nodded and rose to his feet. “What will your collection be called?”

“New beginnings.”

“I do not know about dresses…” he said with such a straight face that she laughed, “but the passion I hear in your words, I am sure it will come through in what you do, ne?”

“You think so?”

“I believe that it will.”

He said it with such confidence that a snippet of conversation she had heard between him and Giannis came back to her. Her grandfather had been asking Stavros about his contacts with major design houses and Stavros had been patiently explaining who would be open to launching a new label with a fresh designer.

Pushing her chair back, she stood up, her stomach in knots. “Your belief in me is encouraging, but I can’t forever be ensconced safely in this world that Giannis and you have created for me. I can’t let you and him launch a label for me using your contacts and the might of…

“If you meant your apology, if anything has changed in how you see me—” she could feel heat rising in her cheeks, but she continued stubbornly “—you’ll stop arranging my life in cahoots with him.”

“He wants to do it for you because he cares—”

“Becoming successful because I’m the Katrakis heiress or Stavros Sporades’s wife will forever ruin my joy in this. Will you do that to me again, Stavros?

“Please… allow me the freedom to succeed or fail on my own merit. Tell Giannis to stop with this launching my label nonsense.”

“If you haven’t realized it, your grandfather has a will of iron—”

“And you can convince him that you could walk on water, so get him to back off.”

Smiling, he nodded. “Anything else?”

She hesitated, which in itself, held Stavros’s attention instantly.

“After that imperious command, what can be so hard, Leah?”

“I have been researching various fashion events and programs around the world and there’s one in Athens tomorrow night that caught my attention.”

“Ahhh…that’s why the uncharacteristic call to my office.”

She let his comment pass. “It’s like a co-op event, to be exact, an incubator for fashion design. No big labels or famous designers. Instead your… Helene and a group of fashion icons like her provide a stage for up-and-coming designers to showcase their talents. My application is ready. But I…”

He waited patiently.

“The entry fee is pretty hefty. Even with that, anyone who gets picked has to actually come with a recommendation from one of the event coordinators.”

Wariness and pity filled his eyes and Leah blanched at it. “Helene is one of those rare women who won’t take you on to do me a favor, Leah. In fact, recommending you to her will only lessen your worth in her eyes.”

She shook her head, wondering if he would always think her less than capable, less than what she was. Did she have anyone but herself to blame if he did?

And why, in God’s name, did the thought hurt so much?

“No, all I want is an introduction to her. My collection, at that point, will hopefully speak for me and garner her recommendation. Even if she doesn’t like it, I will still get some exposure to the industry folks.” Even as she confidently made her case, another tension filled her.

Just admitting the fact that Helene knew Stavros in a way Leah never would, made her want to throw up.

How could he mention the other woman so glibly? Where was his honor now, she wanted to demand. But to ask would be to show that she cared. That she spent entire afternoons wondering how he justified breaking his vows to her so boldly.

Was she so completely and irrevocably only a responsibility that he didn’t think he was cheating on her?

Standing up from his chair, he extended a hand to her. “I’m sure I can convince her to give us ten minutes before the show begins.” He stood tall and broad and incredibly handsome in front of her. His gaze was on her mouth; he was thinking about their kiss, she knew. Because it was impossible not to think about it. “But I need something from you in return, Leah.”

The soft intonation of her name stole her breath.

He had changed toward her if he was asking and not commanding. And whatever the reason, he was even more irresistible and dangerous now.

The judging, dominating Stavros, she could hate. This insightful, approachable Stavros…she didn’t stand a chance.

Spending a few days with Giannis and amassing a lifetime of memories was one thing. But tangling with Stavros, who would demand everything she had to give and more, who would bare her body and soul…she couldn’t risk the pain of knowing him and then losing him.

“What,” she finally managed.

“I will ask you some questions before the event. If I get a truthful answer, I will introduce you to Helene.”

“Anything else I can do instead?” The moment the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to snatch them back.

He only stared at her with that intensity again. “If you won’t tell me the truth, then how about a kiss?”

“You’ve already proved that I…I can’t resist you. There is no reason for you to kiss me anymore.”

He pushed a stray tendril of hair back from her forehead. And she stood very still in the wake of sensations that small touch aroused. “There is a reason.”

“What?”

“That I wish to. It is only when I kiss you that I know you, Leah.”

Warmth pooled in her belly, every word out of his sensuous mouth a caress and a promise. “What happened to that phenomenal willpower of yours that had the rest of us quaking in our boots?”

Laughter—hearty, gorgeous, and spine-tingling, enveloped her. “In this case, I have decided not to employ it.

“You can see Helene, Leah, but you shall have to give me your truths or your kisses. The choice is yours.”

How very neatly he had trapped her, how very stupid she had been in challenging fate when she had said Stavros knew nothing but duty. His words now were honeyed, so damn seductive that her heart thudded. “What if I asked you questions?”

“But I have never lied to you. However, if you ask me a question and I do not tell the truth, you are free to kiss me, as much as you want to.”

“Thanks but no thanks,” Leah managed to say, past the whooshing of her heart.

Turning away from him, she ran back to the sanctuary of her workroom, wondering what had suddenly unleashed this facet of Stavros.

Her wedding gown wasn’t done, but she had three other dresses she could take with her for tomorrow. Swiftly, she removed the dresses from their plastic bags and looked them over for anything to fix.

Countless hours later, she wrapped them back in the hanging bags and zipped them up.

Her heart thudded as she pulled another dress, a dress she had made for herself almost a year ago. The design had literally begged to be borne onto paper, and she had finished it in less than a week.

It was simply cut yet daring, a dress that would say all the right things about its designer. In the end, she decided to brave it out and wear it tomorrow night.

Brave because tomorrow night was going to be dangerous in so many ways that she wanted to turn the time back to a couple of months ago when it had been just her and the apartment and her blistering hatred of him…

Whatever truth he was hunting, it wouldn’t be anything she’d want to tell. Which left her to face his kisses…

Running a comb through her messy hair, Leah stilled. A glimmering energy in her gaze, her pulse beating with a frenzied clamor, she looked like a stranger.

She looked almost happy.

CHAPTER TEN

HE WAS GOING to lose in his own game, Stavros decided ruefully as Leah walked down the steps of the house the next evening.

A game the likes of which he had never before thought of.

He was still amazed at how easily Leah made him laugh, tease, even think of absurd scenarios just for a chance to touch her.

Thin, almost flimsy straps at her shoulders held up the black dress. The hem of the dress, startlingly white, ended high above her knees in the front but fell to her ankles at the back.

Animal-print pumps showed toned calves when she walked down the steps.

All in all, the dress was simply elegant. Or so he thought until she moved, waiting against his Maserati.

A flash of creamy thigh greeted his greedy gaze. The clinging material outlined her braless breasts when she took another step. A sudden breeze highlighted the tips of her nipples as she neared him.

Pure, liquid lust hit him hard, and every muscle in his body tightened, readying for pleasure.

Begging, at this point, if he was honest.

Smoky shadow and dark red lipstick turned her face from pretty to siren… Thick glorious waves framed her fragile features… Her cheeks were pinkened by the time she stood in front of him…

Was that his perusal that had done this to her? Would she tell the truth when he asked or would she prefer to be kissed?

Cristos, he would never even want truth this way. All he would want was to kiss her again and again.

Because he didn’t know what was the right step anymore. He didn’t know where his duty ended and his need for her began…he didn’t know if he was making reparations for the mistake he had made or if he just wanted to see her smile for his own selfish reasons…

For the first time in his life, Stavros was lost, didn’t care about right or wrong. Only how startlingly alive he felt when he was with Leah.

“Hey,” she said, reaching him.

He nodded, still absorbing the effect of her smile. She looked excited, almost happy, and he felt like he had done something right for the first time in so long.

She pointed to the top of the stairs. “So I packed up some of my collection…will you help bring it to the car?”

Inordinately pleased that she was flustered at seeing him, he halted her with a hand on her arm. “You look gorgeous.”

She blinked, and then looked at him almost shyly. “Thanks, it’s one of my own designs.”

“It’s insubstantial, sophisticated and outrageously sexy. I figured out that much.”

By the time they had arrived at the venue, Leah couldn’t sit still, much less think straight. And the pleasant conversation with Stavros, the way his gaze lingered over her mouth for a fraction of a second longer every time she turned toward him, it was like she was being pumped with a bit of electricity.

The powerful Maserati crawled to a stop at a centuries-old hotel and a uniformed valet immediately ran up to them. The locks turned on with a click on the doors. Frowning, she turned toward him. “What is it?”

“Time for my first question, pethi mou.”

“What…now?” The intensity in his expression sent tingles up and down her body. “Stavros, I’m going to show my collection to a group of intimidating professionals who make or break designers on a whim. This is not the time for some silly game that I lose whichever way—”

“Why? Do you have so much to hide?”

That shut her up promptly. “Fine,” she said, bracing herself for a lacerating question.

“My estate, what did you truly think of it?”

“Austere and isolated, like you.” The lie was so automatic, so swift that only after hearing it in the lush interior of the powerful vehicle did she realize that she had said it.

His gaze instantly fell to her mouth. “Liar.”

In a movement that was like slow motion, he wrapped his hand around her nape and slanted his lips over hers. The gear shift dug into her side, her torso was twisted to the side, but the hot taste of Stavros’s mouth…it numbed her to everything else but him.

There was no soft seduction in this kiss, no gentle erosion of her senses. No intent to dominate or control…only to take pleasure…

He pressed and licked, sucked and stroked, made love to her mouth with such raw passion that Leah couldn’t breathe.

Gasping for breath, moaning in the back of her throat, she wrapped her fingers around his nape. A blistering heat spread through her, pooling at her sex as his large hand caressed her knee, climbing up her thigh…

His mouth trailed wet heat over her jaw. Sucked at the pulse at her neck. An arrow of sensation went straight to her sex and she squirmed in frustration. “God, please…”

Those devilish lips opened against her skin and she felt his smile. “I would like nothing but to continue, gaelika mou…”

Her forehead flopped against his shoulders, her lungs burning for breath. “Fine, I lied. I…love that estate. It’s the most beautiful, most peaceful place I have ever seen in the world. Even Giannis’s estate cannot compare against such simple, stark beauty.”

His silence reverberated in the interior, the remnants of lust making the tawny irises wide. “Now I wish I had shown you my bedroom.”

Their gazes collided and Leah shifted in her seat, unbearable to be in her own skin. The rub of her thighs when she crossed her legs, the rasp of her dress against her nipples, every inch of her sparked with awareness. It was like the powerful car they were sitting in. She was all revved up by that kiss and yet, there was no relief.

All evening, this was what he was going to do to her. No wonder he had looked so damn interested in taking her.

How, despite all her efforts to the contrary, was it that Stavros always ended up with all the power? “You’re enjoying torturing me like this, aren’t you?” she whispered.

The locks on the door opened with a click. “It’s very little compared to the torture you put me through all these years, pethi mou.”

Having nothing suitable to contest that with, Leah stepped out of the car on legs that could barely hold her up.

Her dress bags draped over his shoulder casually, Stavros caught her. “Smile, Leah. The world’s not going to know what’s hit them when they see your creations.”

With her hand over his arm, she stopped him. There was nothing but sincerity in his expression. “I would not jest over something that is so important to you, Leah.”

No, he wouldn’t, she realized. Whatever he decided her fate to be in the end, she would always have his support in this too.

God, how had she always been the one with such tunnel vision? How easily she had chosen to hate him, had chosen to see only the surface of him?

“How can you be so sure that I will succeed?”

“All these years, you have hidden so many things from me, and even from yourself, maybe? But when I enter your workroom, I feel all your energy, your passion. I see all of you, Leah. Such pure passion—” his gaze flicked to her mouth “—people can’t help but fall in love with it.”

Throwing her arms around him, Leah kissed his cheek on an impulse. The fact that a man of such willpower and discipline as Stavros believed in her dream just made her day perfect. That a man like him belonged to her, at least for tonight, it made her blood pound.

Stavros handed over Leah to Helene and accepted a glass of champagne from a waiter. The expression on Leah’s face when they had entered the huge, buzzing auditorium, her exclamations as she noticed and pointed out one fashion icon after another, it had been a delight to see.

The soft touch of her lips on his cheek, he could still feel it. Her mouth had been such heaven under his and knowing that all he had to do was push his hands under that hem, that he could bare her and feast his eyes on her…it had taken him everything to bite down the urge to make love to her right there in the car.

The banquet hall where they were serving pre-show drinks and hors d’oeuvres was overflowing with designers and actresses and fashion icons, one more gorgeous than the next. And yet it was Leah his gaze followed hungrily as she flitted through the long hall, her dress sinuously draping her lithe curves.

After a while, he walked through the crowd, found her and introduced her to some more people he knew. A bittersweet feeling filled him as she introduced herself as Leah Huntington with a wary glance at him.

But, whatever his own seesawing feelings when it came to her, he found he couldn’t begrudge her the need to be herself, tonight of all times.

She returned to his side in the auditorium a quarter of an hour before the runway show was about to begin.

Her brown eyes glittered with a joy he had rarely, if ever, seen. “Now that it’s too late, I’m so beginning to see the benefits of being your wife.” Her words were rushed, falling over each other. “Damn, you have some pull, man.”

He was as committed to his vows as he had ever been, if not more. He arrested the words, remembering how hurt she had been when he had mocked their marriage once.

And that he was utterly serious didn’t bear thinking about.

He grabbed a plate from a passing waiter. “Would you like to eat something?”

She didn’t wait for his reply. Reaching him, she grabbed his hand and directed the little flaky pastry into her mouth. Licked the tips of his fingers, her pink mouth closing around one. Lust hit him so quickly that he was achingly hard within seconds.

It was like a haze fell over his senses and all he could see, all he could hear was Leah. Grabbing her wrist, he pulled her behind a long column. Took her mouth in a feral kiss. Cupped her breast, covering her possessively as he had wanted to do all evening.

The rasp of her rigid nipple against his palm made him growl in the back of his throat. He dug his teeth into her lower lip. Her whimper of pain even as she clung to him stopped him. Breathing raggedly, he wondered how easily she undid him.

She glared at him. “You didn’t ask a question.”

He smiled, her confusion making her even lovelier. “Do not lick a man’s fingers, sucking them into your mouth and then expect rationality, Leah.”

Cristo, what was he doing with her?

He would, he could stop at a kiss, he had thought when he had come up with this game. Now, he didn’t know anymore.

“Oh…” she licked her swollen mouth, and the innocent gesture sent his blood flowing south. “I will remember that when I’m tempted to lick a man’s fingers next time.”

The molten fury that flashed in his gaze before he willed it away made Leah want to scream in joy.

He didn’t have all the power. They both had it over each other, she slowly realized.

There was something between them that denied rational explanation, that devoured self-control.

“I’ll ask the question now.”

Brows raised, he nodded. “Ask soon, or you will miss the show.”

The simply elegant Helene’s polite face had stayed with her. His friend or lover or whatever the hell she was, the woman hadn’t betrayed surprise or shock or any emotion even by the flicker of a perfectly drawn eyebrow. Had talked to Leah as if it was any other fashion designer trying to break into the industry.

His kiss still stinging her lips, her will pretty much nonexistent, falling into bed with Stavros was like a fate rushing at her like an express train. If he hadn’t stopped any of the times, if he willed it, she couldn’t resist him, she knew.

And she refused to let him make all the rules.

“How do you…how does this work with you kissing me like this and with Helene? Are you guys taking a breather while you sort me out? What happens if you decide you want to…?”

“Yes?”

Her meager grasp on her own emotions slipping bit by bit, she shivered. Damn it, she had been so happy today and she knew it was largely because it featured him. “Don’t make me say it, Stavros.”

“Say it, Leah.”

“Does she not mind if you…if you have sex with me?”

“Do you want to, Leah…have sex with me?”

Her spine tingled at just hearing that. “That’s not the point.”

“Then isn’t the question moot, too?”

Frustration pumping through her, she pushed into his space. “You promised me truth, Stavros. If something happens between us before I leave, if…will you make one set of rules for me and a different set for yourself?”

His hands climbed up over her back, cradling her against him. “You hide from your own truth every day, Leah… Can you handle mine?”

“Yes.”

“I told you that day aboard Dmitri’s yacht that I meant my wedding vows. I have never broken them. I have not touched Helene or another woman since I married you. And I won’t. Not as long as I wear your ring, as long as I’m your husband.”

Her ring, her husband…

Her grip slacking, Leah fell back, and would have hit the ground if he hadn’t caught her. The entire axis of her life shook, shifted and she could do nothing to stop it. “You’re lying, you have to be…”

His silence jarred against her nerves.

Stavros never lied. Stavros always kept his word. Stavros lived by a code of duty and honor that was everything to him.

And she…she didn’t want to lose her will to a man like that. She didn’t want to be measured against him and fall short. Because, her fear would always trump everything else about her.

“It has been five years, Stavros. No man can—”

There was no nuance in his expression. “But I’m not any man, Leah.” He didn’t proclaim it like an achievement, he didn’t dismiss it like it hadn’t cost him anything. He stated it like a foregone fact.

“My word to Giannis means something to me. My vows to you mean something to me. It’s true that I neglected you, did not treat you like a wife, but our marriage, it was a commitment I made intending to keep. So I waited. I waited for you to grow up. I waited for you to change. I thought I had to…”

“Fix me to be worthy of you?” she said, anger coming to her defense.

“No, I thought I should give us both time…” Something gripped his features and Leah knew that he knew it. “But then you didn’t need to be changed, ne?”

So many years, she had wished she had had the courage to tell him the truth. That he would, for one second, see the real her. And yet now that he did, she felt naked, terrified.

The sudden silence in the long hall made her heart thud so much louder in her ears. The show had begun.

“I’ll miss the show,” she said, moving away. But he pulled her back. Trapped her between the pillar and his body.

“Tell me about Calista.”

Her gaze flew to him. “Stavros, I—”

His hand under her chin tilted her up. “I deserve to know the truth, Leah. If you have never used drugs, that means you didn’t introduce her to them.”

She closed her eyes, holding back tears. “No.” His silence drove her to open them again. “I went to every party you forbade me from, I drank even though most of the time I couldn’t even keep it in, I flirted with boys who didn’t care an iota about me because it would enrage you, I spent money only because you said not to, but I…I never touched drugs. I didn’t even know that crowd…” She stopped, once again, skating the line of lies. “I didn’t know where she even got it…God, if I had…”

The confusion, the guilt in Leah’s eyes far too real, Stavros didn’t need to ask her why she had never told him the truth before.

Because he wouldn’t have believed it. He had been so blind, he had been in so much pain that he had shut everyone out. Only his failure had mattered, not the why of it.

He had so conveniently blamed Leah for it, absolving Calista of any fault.

“Then why do you carry such guilt in your eyes?”

“Because I loaned her that money a couple of days before. I was so angry with you for cutting my trip to New York short. I…hated you so much. So when she said that she needed cash, that you would never agree to give her so much, I gave her every last penny.”

She flopped against him, her body shaking. Feeling as if there was an anvil on his chest, Stavros wrapped his hands around her.

Calista had borrowed it from Leah, knowing that he would not like it, probably even aware that he would take it out on Leah. What had she been thinking?

He hadn’t known his sister then. It hung like a boulder around his neck, choking his breath. Leah had been right in this too.

Leah couldn’t speak for the pain in Stavros’s gaze, in his sudden withdrawal.

She had hated Stavros for being so tough on her and Calista, but Calista hadn’t once mentioned her unhappiness or her problems to him.

With him, Calista had almost been a different person. Loving, smiling, obedient…as if she had just slipped into a different skin.

Now she wished she had gone to Stavros and blurted it all out.

Calista had been troubled, she realized that now. Maybe even depressed.

With hindsight, she wondered how much of that had fueled her own antagonism toward Stavros, because it had been so scary and powerless to see Calista like that. She had been mired in her own pain about her dad’s death and Stavros had been a convenient target to lash out at. And yet she hated having to tell the truth now, hated this power that she had over him.

She didn’t want to cause Stavros any pain.

He was rigid, he was stubborn and arrogant, but God, he had loved Calista in his own way. He had tried so hard to keep Leah away from her because he had thought her a bad influence on her. He had given Calista everything except…except listening to her.

But how could she tell him that now? How could she tell him that Calista had already been in trouble long before Leah had come into her life? That Leah had followed Calista’s lead always?

The man she knew now, he still dominated, even used her attraction but hadn’t she pushed him to it by dangling the truth in bits and pieces?

Calista was gone. There was nothing to be done now. There was nothing to be achieved by digging into the ugly truth.

So, she swallowed all the other truths back, bolstered her own courage and looked into his eyes.

Managing a smile, she squeezed his hand. “She was not unhappy, Stavros. I think, just restless. She…she definitely hated your rules as much as I did.” She forced a smile to take the bite out of it. “But she…loved you.”

He remained silent. And Leah wondered if he knew that she was quaking inside. When she had lied to him before, it had been to protect herself. This time, it was to protect him.

“I think that night whatever she took…it must have been a one-time thing. Something she thought she would try and then walk away. I’m so sorry that I gave her that money.”

“You were barely nineteen, Leah. And I…made it so hard to come to me with anything, ne? I found fault with you at every turn, I curbed all your freedom, and then I—”

“Why?” The question barreled out of Leah.

By his actions toward her, his efforts to again and again control her, change her, he had made it so easy to hate him, so easy to hide the truth about Calista from him.

She had wanted to not care about anyone ever again in her life, had pulled the act so well that Stavros had believed all of it.

He had started a war between them, and Leah was the one who had kept feeding it. To better hide her attraction, to better fight whatever risk he presented to her emotions, she realized now. “Why did you always hate me so much?”

“I didn’t hate you.”

“In the beginning, I thought it was because Giannis brought me here. Because you resented my being the heiress to such a vast fortune. Which, it turned out was a big joke. You were the one, along with Dmitri, who turned Katrakis Textiles into a multimillion-dollar business. So what was it, Stavros?”

His expression shuttered instantly. “It was wrong of me, Leah. Isn’t that enough?”

“No, it’s not. I have a right to know. I…”

“You just…your actions—your neglect of Giannis, they reminded me of someone. But it was no excuse to—”

“Of whom?” Leah couldn’t let go. Not when she was finally so close to understanding him.

“Of my father. All he cared about was himself, his next drink and how he would gain it. My mother, instead of kicking him out, instead of caring for her kids, walked out without looking back. Neither Calista nor I mattered. They left us with our grandparents who weren’t equipped to raise us. All they had was a small farm. I managed fine. But Calista…

“She would watch for her at the gate for so many hours…and then one day, we got news of my father’s car crash.” He rubbed his face. “I remember thinking that it was a blessing for her.” His mouth twisted into a bitter curve. “He died and all I could think was Calista wouldn’t suffer anymore.”

That said so much about his own state of mind. “And then Giannis came for you?”

“Yes, my grandfather wrote to him about my father’s death. I fought so much to bring her with us. But he said he had failed with his own daughter and that he couldn’t bear to fail again. I—” such pain impinged on his features that a lump formed in her throat “—I…promised her I would come back for her. And I did… It took me two years to convince Giannis. Two years to go back for her.”

“What was she like when you went back?”

He frowned at her sudden question. “Why?”

“Never mind,” she replied, faking nonchalance. But her head hurt, and her chest felt so tight.

My brother—I can’t disappoint him, Calista had admitted once to her. Had she been afraid he would not come back? Had she been afraid to show her true self to him?

“Leah, why—”

Sinking her hands into his hair, she pulled him down for a kiss. His hands on her waist, his taste on her lips, made her feel she was owned by him. She wanted to take away his pain, to ease the confusion in his eyes every time he talked about Calista.

Drowning in his taste, she could forget all the truths bearing down upon her, she could swallow the truth forever.

His arms tightened around her while his mouth continued its passionate assault.

Just as all the other times, he was the one who finally stopped. The heated rush of their breaths mingled as he rubbed a gentle finger over her mouth.

“What was that for?”

“I have no more truths to tell. The show, I don’t want to miss it, Stavros.”

“Go,” he commanded, a thoughtful look in his face. “But we are not through, Leah.” All kinds of promises lingered in his words.

And Leah fled.

She muddled through the darkness of the auditorium and found her seat. Up-tempo music blared as the runway dazzled with one magnificent creation after the other.

But it was mostly lost on her. He didn’t join her in the adjacent seat, and Leah, still shaken by everything they had talked about, was glad for a reprieve.

Now, she wished she hadn’t asked. She wished she hadn’t seen that vulnerability in his eyes. That she hadn’t seen the ache when he mentioned his parents.

She wished she didn’t know how committed he was to his vows.

Wished she didn’t understand what made Stavros the way he was. She wished she had never started on this path at all.

Because understanding Stavros meant wanting Stavros with a cloying, all-consuming madness.

Already, she saw admiration, respect in his eyes when he looked at her, she saw that flash of curiosity when she evaded his questions.

If he showed such commitment, such respect for the vows he had made to the selfish, immature girl she had been, what would he be like if she shared her fears, if she followed her heart and gave this relationship of theirs a chance?

Because, suddenly, she wanted to be that woman more than anything she had ever wanted in her life.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

WHEN LEAH HAD woken up that morning in her sun-kissed bedroom, she had already known it was a new kind of day.

Despite her efforts to protect herself, which she saw clearly now, it seemed Stavros actually saw her, the true her.

He knew that she hadn’t ever touched drugs in her life. He knew that a career in fashion design meant the world to her. He knew that Giannis meant a lot to her.

It had been almost two in the morning when she had finished meeting with everyone she wanted to see. And all the while, Stavros had loomed large in her mind.

Both emotionally and physically tired and strung out by Helene’s positive initial reaction to her designs, she had fallen asleep within moments after he had started the powerful engine.

It had been the best night of her life.

She felt like she was standing in front of him without a shield for the first time. It was a moment of both power and fear, for he could so easily bind her to him always, he could so easily make her…

Pushing her hair away from her face, Leah walked to the window. Fueled by that growing need to see him, she showered and dressed in a sleeveless yellow blouse and a long, flowy skirt. Braided her half-wet hair into a plait, pushed her feet into comfy flip-flops and made her way down.

She was at the last few steps on the winding staircase that opened to the main foyer when the deafening silence finally registered.

His collar undone, his cuffs rolled back, Stavros still wore the same shirt as last night.

His hair was unkempt and his pallor a ghostly white under that olive skin. His nostrils flared as he saw her at the steps; something slithered across his face but he held her gaze, almost as if willing her to only see him, as if making her oblivious to the rest of the world.

And he was such a commanding figure that it almost worked.

Except she had lived half her life with moments like this, with that gut-twisting fear that something always went wrong when she found happiness.

Nausea pushed its way up her throat.

She gripped the balustrade so tight that her knuckles turned pale against the dark sheen but she forced herself to break his gaze and look beyond him.

Dmitri emerged from her grandfather’s room, his features ravaged. A half-empty bottle of scotch dangled from his hand, and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked at her, blinked, and then walked away without another glance.

He looked like he was coming apart at the seams, the complete contrast to Stavros’s frozen withdrawal, to the tight ropes with which he held himself.

“What happened?” Her words were loud, almost a scream in that dignifiedly morbid silence. She flew off the steps when he didn’t answer.

Launched herself at Stavros like a crazy dog. Like an immovable wall, he absorbed all her rage, all her blows as she pummeled at him. “What happened, Stavros? Tell me or I will—”

Pulling her into him so hard that the breath was knocked out of her, Stavros hugged her. Hugged her so tight her chest hurt with the effort to breathe, her head was dizzy…until all she could focus on was getting air into her collapsing lungs.

Only then did he loosen his hold on her. Tucking a finger under her chin he pushed it up to meet his gaze. “I’m sorry, pethi mou. Giannis is gone, Leah.”

Leah flopped onto him, the words stealing into her with a sickening thud. “No…” she whispered, futile tears filling her eyes.

“Look at me, galika mou,” he pleaded with such tenderness that she did.

Clasping her cheeks, he looked into her eyes. “He passed with a smile on his lips, Leah. He said he loved you, that he…he was so happy that you spent the past few days with him. I have never seen such peace in his eyes in all the years I have known him. You brought such joy to him.”

“Why didn’t you wake me? Why didn’t you at least let me say goodbye?” She pushed away from him, bitterness and anger and pain all roping together. “He was my grandfather. You and Dmitri…I had just as much right to be with him.”

The pads of his thumbs caught her spilled tears. “He insisted that I did not disturb you, Leah. Said you were not fond of goodbyes.”

A sob rising through her, Leah ran back upstairs without another glance at Stavros.

He had known. Her perceptive grandfather had known how scared she had been, he had known what it had cost her to reject him again and again…

In just a few weeks, Giannis had become such a huge part of her life and now, he was gone…Leaving her alone again to mourn him.

And for once in her life, Leah didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to be ruled by fear. For once, she wanted to reach for the man she desperately needed. She wanted to lean on his strength, she wanted to take everything he would give of himself, everything she had always been too scared to ask.

It was almost evening when Stavros entered Giannis’s house again that day. He came to a halt in the vast foyer, the image of Leah standing at that last step, her expression of such fear and pain, the first thing he saw.

He had never seen her like that. Never heard that desperation in her tone. Over the last couple of weeks, he had accepted the fact that he had been wrong about Leah on so many levels. Yet he realized tonight that he had been no closer to truly understanding her.

She had desperately wanted him to say anything other than what he had, he knew. And the force of his own need, of his own desire to offer her anything but the hard truth, it had knocked him where he stood.

He wanted to wipe away those tears, he wanted to protect her from that grief, he wanted to…and all of it, it had nothing to do with duty.

The silence tonight was so different from all the other nights. He had done everything he possibly could to do all that Giannis had asked of him. All the arrangements had been put in place for the funeral to happen in a few days.

He was about to call for his housekeeper, instruct her to check up on Leah when she emerged from his office, rubbing her eyes. The yellow top that had looked so bright this morning was rumpled. Her hair was tangled all around her and dark circles hung under her eyes.

“Leah, were you waiting for me?”

Grabbing her hair away from her face, she pulled it tightly at the back. “Yes.”

The innocent action thrust her breasts up and he swallowed his hunger.

Cristo, this was not the time for his control to shred. He was literally shivering with need.

It had been easy to offer comfort this morning. Yet now, he couldn’t move, couldn’t form a coherent thought. The shock of losing the one man who had ever tried to understand him, who had tried to care for him hit him hard in that moment. And he felt curiously weak, as if a strong gust of wind could knock him down.

He must have swayed because suddenly Leah was almost bowed back trying to support his weight. Her breasts rubbed against his side, her scent kicked him in the gut.

Her eyes were molten pools of concern and vulnerability as she held onto him. “You look like you are ready to fall apart. Have you sat down for a minute since last night?”

Putting her away from him, Stavros searched for his fragmented willpower. “I just need some sleep. What did you want?”

Would she ask to leave tonight? What would he do if she did?

The three months were almost up. After seeing her with Giannis these past two weeks, after talking to her about Calista, he had questions about himself.

He was drowning and he so desperately needed the very woman he had doubted.

“Nothing important. Come, I’ll walk you to your room.”

He smiled then, the weight on his chest lightening. “You, pethi mou?” She looked so lovely that his eyes hurt. “You will break in two if I so much as lean on you.”

Her hands on her hips, she mock-glared at him. “I’m not as weak as I look, Stavros. If your studly, macho ego rails at accepting help from me, that’s fine. But when was the last time you had something to eat? I can make something if you like.”

“You’re offering to cook for me?”

“Well, I can’t make a three-course meal but I can manage a grilled cheese sandwich.”

It was a tempting offer. Everything about her was tempting. And tonight, he was hanging on by the end of his rope.

“I’m not hungry,” he said morosely, unbuttoning his shirt. She followed the movement with such wide eyes that his fingers slipped on the damn buttons. Rubbing a hand over his gritty eyes, he gave up on it. “Go to bed, Leah.”

“I don’t think I could sleep tonight.” A shudder racked her. “I never do on such nights.” The resignation in her words brought his head up. For someone so young, she had seen too much death, he realized with a pang.

They both had, a perverse thing to have in common.

She looked so vulnerable, right then, her oval face small. The urge to take her in his arms was so strong that he had to fist his hands. “There’s nothing I can do for you tonight, Leah.”

“No, I don’t want anything, I…I didn’t see you again all day and whenever I called, I was told you were busy.”

Because he had instructed his secretary to not put her calls through. “I had too many things to take care of.”

Wrapping her arms around herself, she nodded. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay, Stavros. And to apologize.”

“Why?”

“I’m sorry for going off at you like that this morning. I’m sorry for always attacking you.”

He forced a smile. “I can take it, Leah.”

“It’s just that…I forgot how much Giannis meant to you too.”

Raising his hand, he stopped her. “Leah, it’s not needed.”

“Yeah?” she said with a depth of sadness. “Okay. Anyway, once I stopped crying and managed a shower, I went looking for you. Dmitri came back and wouldn’t leave even though I promised I was okay. You sent him, didn’t you?”

Today of all days, he didn’t trust himself to be near her. That pain of hers, it had unlocked something inside him. And until he understood what, she was better left alone.

When he shrugged, she continued. “Dmitri said you hadn’t said a word all night. And that you probably won’t over the next few days or maybe even months. That your silence…it was the most nauseating thing in the world. That for months after Calista died, the only words he had heard from your mouth were the vows you made to me that day.”

Anger roared out of him. “Bloody Dmitri needs to learn to keep his mouth shut.”

“You’d rather I continue to think you as unfeeling as you make out to be, Stavros?”

“This is not your burden to bear, Leah. I have no expectations of you—”

Hurt etched into her mouth. “You will turn my life upside down because I need to be protected, but I can’t even wonder what’s going on with you?”

“I do not need to be protected, Leah.”

“You have never wished you could unburden yourself with someone, that you could share your joy or pain or…”

“No. For as long as I can remember, I never had the indulgence to do so. If I hadn’t shoved all that pain and grief away and handled things, life would have stopped for me and Calista. The way forward was the only thing left.” All his life he had been alone in moments like this…and there had been far too many of them.

Had he reached his edge now?

“Well, I don’t accept that. Today, of all days, when we have both lost the man who did everything he could to bind me to you, I won’t accept it. This relationship he forced on you—”

“For the millionth time, he didn’t force it on me.” In the roiling confusion he felt, perversely, that he couldn’t bear to hurt her. Not anymore. He couldn’t bear for her to think he resented her in his life anymore.

Right now, she felt like the only thing that was anchoring him to his sanity. Right now, all he wanted was to take what she was offering. Right now, he wanted to lose himself. In her.

“It was not just for my benefit. He told me that, Stavros. He said you needed me just as much as he thought I needed you.”

Stavros closed his eyes and dealt the blow that he knew would hurt. “But we found out that he was wrong, didn’t we, Leah? It turns out you didn’t need me to lock you up in a cage, you didn’t need me to steal away any joy from you for five years, turns out that I was wrong about you every way… And by that same token—” he had to say it, he had to believe it, because the alternative was just unthinkable for a man who possessed no capability for emotion, knew nothing but duty “—I don’t need you in my life either. It was just an old man’s dream, Leah.”

“Don’t you dare say that!” she screamed at him, her body vibrating with rage. “Don’t you dare…not tonight, Stavros.”

“Leah, walk away, pethi mou,” he warned her, past the hard lump in his throat.

It felt like he wouldn’t be able to breathe for the tightness in his chest if she came any closer. It felt like the grief running through him would consume him, and her, if she came any closer. It felt like he wouldn’t stop when he should if she came any closer.

But his stubborn, reckless wife didn’t heed his warning. She never did.

“But what he said to me won’t leave me alone, Stavros.” Reaching him, she clasped his cheeks, stared into his eyes as if she could read into his soul.

There was nothing for her to see, nothing for her to learn. The chill that had been curling around the edges all last night and today pervaded through.

“He…loved you so much…” She ran her fingers over his mouth, her touch reverent and possessive at the same time. “When I first came to Greece, he told me so much about you that I hated you for what you had with him…and then there you were, wherever I turned, so austere, arrogant, hating me back… Any time he talked about you, his eyes lit up and this fierce pride came into his eyes, he said you only gave—” she leaned her forehead against his lips now, a long exhale racking through her “—that you…never ask anything for yourself.”

Her hands vined around his midriff. “I don’t want to be alone tonight. And I definitely won’t leave you alone, even if you don’t say a word to me.”

And Stavros lost the battle against himself.

Had he even stood a chance against her from the moment he had seen her on Dmitri’s yacht, he wondered.

He grabbed her wrists to push her away, to reject her embrace as every finely honed instinct warned him to. Raking her fingers over his skin, she pushed at him, until he relented. Laced their fingers together. Pulled at him until their joined hands bound her to him.

And then she took his mouth with hers, like a wave he couldn’t beat down, engulfing him.

The taste of her filled him with pleasure, infused him with electricity, flew into all the open, aching places inside him.

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Stavros. You…meant so much to him. You looked after him better than his own family did.”

Those words destroyed the last bit of his will, her slender body pressed to his was his undoing.

Jerking her up against his body, he covered her mouth with his. Such hunger emanated within, such need knocked at him that he devoured her soft mouth. Digging his hands into her hair, he nipped and licked, he bit and stroked, he let himself drown in her.

She gave in with a soft gasp, opened her honeyed warmth to him. The taste of her, the sound of her breathless gasps filled him up.

After five years of celibacy, he didn’t have the remotest control over himself. After a lifetime of not needing anyone, the need she brought out in him, the pain she brought out in him, he had no defense against it.

His kisses were drugged, his caresses setting her on fire, his touch tearing open a chasm of longing inside her. Surrounded by his warmth, drowning in the masculine scent of him, Leah felt like she would never be alone again.

As long as Stavros continued to kiss her like this, there was no fear in her life.

There were no lies or games or duty or even the bonds of marriage between them now.

All there was was this desire in all its eviscerating and humbling honesty. In this, finally, they were equals. In this, finally, he was a man she couldn’t breathe without knowing in the most intimate way and she, she was the woman who had ripped the civilized facade from him.

A sobbing protest rose through her when he tugged his mouth away from hers. The sound of his harsh breathing was little comfort. But he lifted her up until she wrapped her legs around him.

“Hold tight, thee mou,” he commanded, his eyes so lust-glazed, his voice so rumbly that a shiver snaked up her spine.

She buried her mouth in his neck, hiding the sudden shyness that rose through her. She didn’t want him to see it and stop, she couldn’t bear it if he walked away because he thought she was afraid.

She was not afraid. At least not of what he would do to her. Only of the intensity of her want for him. She was afraid that whatever he did would only be the beginning of an intense yearning.

He returned to her mouth with a blistering passion that she had wanted for so long. Buried his mouth in her neck and sunk his teeth into her skin. Her legs wrapped around him, her skirt riding up to her thighs, she jerked against him, when he sucked at the soft flesh. Then he found her mouth again, nipped her lower lip this time.

Throwing her head back, she moaned loudly, pain and pleasure infusing in her very blood. And then he licked that very spot.

He carried her as if she weighed nothing, his long fingers cupping her bottom.

Heart thundering in her chest, Leah opened her eyes as she heard the thud of a door closing.

He had brought them to his office. The moment her bottom touched the oak desk, his hands reached for the hem of her blouse.

Her breathing coming so hard that it should have been a loud rattle in the room, Leah looked down. His hands disappeared under the yellow silk of her blouse. Those hair roughened wrists against her midriff, the bulge in his trousers…it was the most decadent sight she had ever seen.

“Theos, you’re gorgeous,” he groaned just as his fingers tugged her bra down with frenzied movements. And then his abrasive palm covered her breast.

“Oh…” Leah slid a little on the desk as he rubbed her aching nipples. Every time he pulled it between his fingers, her sex pulsed.

Pushing into his hand, she forgot what she had been about to say. Just his touch was sending her over the edge. Both his hands covered her breasts now. Pulling and kneading, while he murmured words she didn’t understand in Greek.

“Please, Stavros…” she said, mindless in her search for release already.

All of a sudden, his curse ripped through the air and he pulled away from her.

Frustrated desire wreaking havoc on her, Leah struggled for her breath. Her breasts left alone, felt heavy, her nipples knotting with need.

“Why would you stop,” she said, pushing back tears. He was so hard and warm and she was already afraid she would never want to leave. But how did she walk away from this hot magic he weaved? From how wanted and needed he had made her feel?

“Is this punishment too, Stavros?”

“Leah, look at me, pethi mou.”

She raised a dazed gaze to him, ready to beg him to not stop. But he didn’t stop. His mouth took hers in a ravishing kiss… Their tongues dueled and sucked with a frantic desperation, teeth scraped against each other until they were both panting.

“I have no protection, Leah,” he murmured against her mouth finally. “I dare not risk—”

“I’m on the pill,” she said in a small voice. “You dragged me to the gynecologist and stood outside her door, remember?” A flush overtook his cheeks and she milked the moment for all its worth. “It was the most humiliating moment of my life but—”

His hand covered her mouth. “No more words, ne?”

She pressed a kiss to the center of his palm and nodded. Continued tracing the hard mound of it to the thick veins in his wrists while her other hand explored his body.

Pushing her hands higher, he pulled her top off. Leah could hardly take in the sensations piling over her when he muttered a hoarse “Take off your bra.”

In another blink, he tugged her skirt down her legs.

She sat in front of him, her breasts heavy and aching, her nipples turning into painful knots and a thong that showed more than it covered.

“Theos, you’re going to be the death of me, Leah.”

For long seconds that felt like an eternity, he only looked at her. Pulled her calf up until her foot was resting over the table, exposing the heart of her in such an indecent way that she resisted.

The hunger in his face was possessive, all-consuming, his grip over her calf unrelenting. “No, don’t hide. Leah, never hide yourself from me.”

Palm down, he touched her everywhere, from her shoulders bones to the valley between her breasts, from her abdomen to finally the one spot that ached for his attention.

When he covered her mound with his hand and pressed with the pad of his finger, Leah jerked, a spasm of spiraling pleasure gripping her belly.

His dark hand covering her wet warmth…fire flew in her veins. “I can smell your arousal, Leah,” he whispered at her ear and she hid her face in his chest even as she reveled in his raspy voice. “That I make you feel like this…it drives me crazy in my own skin.”

With a hand in her hair, he tugged her back, his grip just a little short of bruising. Dragged his mouth over her neck, leaving a trail of heat. “Every gasp you make, every moan that escapes you…tonight, they are mine. You, pethi mou, are all mine.”

Staring into his eyes, Leah dragged him down for another kiss. “As you’re mine,” she whispered against his mouth.

She had never seen that blistering need in his eyes, never seen those commanding eyes darken like that.

Two fingers moved arrogantly over her nipple, plucking and rubbing while his gaze stayed on her face.

The heat with which he watched her made her feel even more exposed than her nakedness. That she would know what it felt to be possessed by him, that he would know her like no other man ever had, it filled her blood with thrill.

“Touch me,” he commanded.

Still being plundered mercilessly by his mouth, Leah obeyed. If this was how alive she felt in his arms, she would be his willing slave, she thought, tucking her hand under his shirt.

He was so hot, the washboard stomach instantly clenching under her fingers, the shuddering exhale of his breath drenching her…he was as far gone in this madness as she was.

When she moved her hand down, and traced his arousal with shaking fingers outside his trousers, he thrust his hips into her hand.

Such carnal need touched his arrogant features that Leah felt like a victor.

Leaving her breasts, he traced her rib cage, drew sensuous circles around her navel, impatiently pulled her thong off.

When he fingered her folds after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, Leah shivered violently. When he said, “Widen your legs,” with such possessive intent, a feverish tremble claimed her.

When he pushed a finger, then two into her wet heat followed by a string of curses, she whimpered and dug her teeth into his shoulder.

The slick glide of his fingers was intrusive, yet addictive, his touch was alien and it felt as if she had been waiting for it, her entire life.

All of her being pulsed at her sex, on the erotic movements of his fingers as they disappeared into her aching folds, on the way he pulled her into the heat of his body…

“You are so responsive, Leah, I could do this all day long,” he uttered, his other hand moving up to cover her breast again.

“I couldn’t, Stavros, please…” she begged, the ever-spiraling tension too much to bear.

His fingers slicked in and out of her on a relentless tempo, stroking the fire along her nerve endings into an inferno.

She was gasping, sinking and sobbing, and she wanted more.

His hot mouth, trailing wet heat over her skin, reached her breast. With a groan that aroused her as much as his touch, he licked the aching nipple. Stroked it and played with it and did everything except what she wanted.

“Stop torturing me,” she said in a voice that sounded alien to her own ears.

She felt his smile against her mouth. “Say ‘please, Stavros,’” he whispered against her skin. He sounded drunk, guttural.

Joining in his game, she let go of the last layer of inhibition. She refused to beg however. Refused to bend to his will when she could demand what was hers… “Put your mouth where I want and I will put my mouth where you want it,” she dared.

His curse reverberated in the dead silence, seconds before his mouth closed on her nipple.

Sensation upon sensation beat over her. Her fingers sinking into his hair, she held him at her breast. Every time he closed his mouth over her nipple and sucked, a thousand little tremors began in her lower belly.

He raked the highly sensitized point with his teeth slowly, as if he was savoring every second of it and Leah came with a scream that shattered the hot silence.

Everything inside her splintered into a thousand shards as the tremors piled on and on in mind-numbing pleasure.

Even as her voice turned hoarse with her continued gasps and screams, even as her breath left her lungs entirely, he didn’t let go. His fingers continued their assault, wringing every last pull of her muscles, turning her into a mass of shuddering sensation.

When he let go of her, she flopped onto him, damp and hot and shivering, her limbs incapable of independent motion.

She heard the rasp of his zipper, followed by the quiet swish of his trousers falling and somehow, managed to look up.

The streak of color in his tight cheeks, that muscular chest falling and rising, the washboard abs, and his erection, thick and corded, lying against his belly… He was a vision, a sight she thought she would never see.

A new friction began to build between her thighs. “Wow,” she said, reaching out to touch him.

The velvety weight of him was nothing like she had imagined.

Tawny irises dilated to dark pools as she wrapped her hand around it.

Tiny tremors pulsed through her sex as she rubbed the soft tip, and she marveled at her own body’s reaction to him. He hissed out a breath as she tested the weight and feel of it. Cursed as she fisted him and moved up and down in a movement as instinctual as breathing.

“I’m ready to keep my word now,” she said boldly, intent on tasting him, intent on driving him as mad as he had done her.

A dark smile warmed his gaze. “Yes?”

She nodded.

“I have not tasted you either, ne?” he said with such carnal intent that she instinctively clutched her thighs together.

But he jammed a rock-hard thigh in between. Her sensitive core rubbed against that hard thigh and a whimper escaped her.

Tugging her head back, he ravished her mouth until her lips stung. Every inch of her vibrated. “This madness, it is only beginning, pethi mou. Another night, we will taste each other.”

He was so velvety hard in her hand and the need to know how he would feel inside her, the need to know Stavros in this raw moment…

“Do not look away, Leah. I want to see every expression on your face, I want to hear every sound you make.”

One hand moved over her body in long, lingering strokes, over her breasts, over her stomach, and then, in one thrust that breached her virginity, in one movement that changed her forever, he entered her.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE PAIN THAT streaked through Leah’s eyes, the jagged whimper that fell from her swollen mouth arrested Stavros when he would have thrust deeper inside her. The walls of her sex were so tight around his rigid shaft, the friction so unbearably good that he had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop.

The taste of his own blood finally punctured that haze.

Slowly, as if he was waking through a fog that owned his senses, he tried to shake off the fever that clung to his skin and muscles. The dawn of truth on his lust-riddled brain was slow, excruciating.

Cristos, she was as untried in body, as innocent as she had been of all the wrongs he had attributed to her.

Another horribly wrong misstep on his part.

He had taken her so roughly, on his bloody desk of all places! For five years, he had lived like a monk and now, pushed inside her like an animal…

Shame and fury roped together inside. He wanted to pound his fist into the desk. The only thing that stopped him was the thought of scaring her.

Sweat beaded on his brow. Marshaling his thoughts by the skin of his teeth, he looked down at her. Her pinched lips, the white pallor of her cheeks…it was like a lash against his skin.

“Looks like more lies, little wife,” he snarled.

Color returned to her cheeks and with it, that reckless defiance that had given him sleepless nights. Like a bloody switch, he hardened even more inside her. “You assumed everything about me,” she replied, her fingers digging into his shoulders.

Every inch of him felt the heat of her fingers, of her breath feathering over his skin.

He was so aroused, his body so out of his control that he closed his eyes and willed his breath to calm down. Holding her hips, he slowly pulled out, the slick slide of her walls too much temptation to resist.

She stole her hand under his shirt, searching, caressing, possessive. Like she owned him. Like he hadn’t just breached her virginity like a marauding animal. Like she knew her way around a man’s body.

No, his body, he corrected himself, as the feathered strokes of her fingers wreaked hell on his better intentions.

She had and she would only ever know his body, came the utterly useless and distracting thought.

Her soft fingers reached his buttocks and she dug her nails in. Sharp and hard. She pushed closer with her bottom until her breasts rasped against his chest. Pleasure burst forth in his belly and the back of his thighs and he pushed into her wet heat, despite himself.

He pulled at her hair roughly, trying to grab her attention. “Stop it,” he whispered, fighting the heat building inside, the need clamoring at him to just let go. “I don’t want to hurt you. Theos, Leah, I just…” He felt something in him clench tight against her, as if she could wreak infinite hurt on him. “I could not bear it if I hurt you anymore.”

“Stavros…won’t you look at me, please.”

The pleading, persuasive tone would have pulled him into hell.

He opened his eyes and was lost instantly.

Her eyes glittered with raw emotion, and once again, he found himself stunned at how much she could feel, how much Leah risked despite all her lies.

In a sensuous movement that was born more of need than finesse, she brought her mouth to his. Slowly, softly, seduced him with long kisses and lingering strokes. Set her tongue to his mouth and made love to him like he had never experienced before.

Her breath was a harsh whisper against his mouth. “You will hurt me if you stop now. I started this knowing what I wanted, I started this because you finally saw me as your equal. Not a thing to be protected and controlled. Right?” When he remained silent, she buried her face in his neck, a catch in her throat. “From the moment you stood there at the airport to pick me up, all haughty, forbidding, so contemptuous—”

He groaned. “You tried to run away to Paris while Giannis waited on tenterhooks for you in Athens.”

“—I had such a crush on you. I have had dreams that you would look at me like you did tonight. Please, Stavros. Tell me that I didn’t imagine that look in your eyes. Tell me that you’re doing this because you want me and not because you feel sorry for me or because it’s your duty.”

Tenderness joined fiery desire now. Tilting her chin up, he caught the tear that ran down one soft cheek. The sight of that lone tear undid him as nothing ever had. A fist could be squeezing his chest for the tightness there. “My want…for you, my need knows no reason, Leah… That I do this when I should be…” He searched for the words to say it right, searched his own feelings, as raw and strange as they were. “You make me selfish, Leah. You make me angry, and sad, and laugh and…just so unbalanced. You sink under my skin, pethi mou, and I can’t breathe for wanting you.”

Such a smile dawned on her lips that the beauty and joy in it made his breath catch.

Her shoulders tense, she slowly thrust her hips forward. “It doesn’t hurt…” When he glared, she added, “…that much.” Wrapping her hand around his nape possessively, she leaned in. “Give me this tonight, Stavros. Please. Give us both what we want.”

That raw, unabashed request coming from that perfect little mouth was enough to shred his will.

He thrust his tongue into her mouth, falling deeper and deeper into her spell. “Tell me if it becomes too much,” he commanded. “I will stop, Leah.” Even if it killed him.

She nodded, like a good little dutiful wife when the cunning minx was anything but.

Palming her breasts, he rubbed her nipples, and the tight points curling his muscles into a new frenzy.

“You like it when I do that.” She moaned into his mouth, a smile curving her lush mouth. “I could do it all day, pethi mou, caress your breasts, suck your nipples until you…come just from that.”

With every word he said, he started moving again. And her heat welcomed him, sending a current of need through his nerve endings. “Tell me what you feel,” he said, continuing to kiss her, tease her nipples with his fingers.

“No more pain,” she said against his shoulder.

He thrust in again, slowly but forcefully. Reminded himself to speak again through the delirious heat enveloping him. “Now?”

“It feels achy…full…incredibly hot…” she half sobbed.

“Hold on tight to me, thee mou,” he whispered, and pulled all the way out.

She whimpered, like a kitten denied her treat. “I feel empty now,” she said, meeting his gaze, unbuttoning his shirt.

He thrust back in again, heat curling through his muscles as she slapped those long fingers over his chest. Scraped a flat nipple with her nail. “Now?”

“Oh God, Stavros…” a guttural groan escaped her.

Grabbing her hips, he locked her against him as he built up a rhythm. His climax was rushing at him, hard, explosive. Spots were beginning to dance behind his eyes. His pulse raced, his lungs burst. Every thrust brought him closer to the edge and he couldn’t contain the momentum, couldn’t control his pace.

Desperation took the place of finesse, animal lust destroyed concern for her.

“Leah…I can’t slow down now, pethi mou.”

“Don’t.” She opened her mouth against his chest, and he jerked. Pleasure hung around on a serrated edge as she dug her teeth in, harder. “I want all of you, Stavros. I want everything you give.”

Clutching her bottom, he tilted her and thrust again.

“I want to die, now. It’s so much,” she moaned.

“Look down,” he commanded, raking through the sheer lust to find an iota of control, determined to push her to the edge one more time.

She did. A raw groan fell from her mouth.

“Touch yourself, galika mou.” The desk shook with his thrusts, blood whooshed in his ears.

Shock flashed in her eyes. “No. I…can’t. That’s…just…” Her innocence tugged at him even as she undid every one of his rules with her innate sensuality.

Christos, this need for her would not stop here, would never stop consuming him.

He licked the rim of her ear, and pleaded, as he had never done before. “Imagine that it is me touching your wet heat, imagine it is me licking you there… Do it for me, Leah. Please.”

Color streaking her cheeks, she met his gaze. “You would like it?”

“It would be the most erotic sight I would ever see.”

Her mouth trembling, she snuck her hand between their bodies. Her long finger reached between them slowly. “Go on…”

Her head went back, her back arched as she stroked herself.

Stavros groaned, pumped into her, hard and fast, pleasure drenching him in sweat, robbing his breath from him.

“Come for me, Leah.”

For once, in his life, the firecracker that his wife was, complied.

Pleasure burst in his veins, in his blood, in his muscles as Leah came with a long, drawn-out groan and her contracting muscles pulled at him.

His climax knocked his breath out, and his mind blanked out as he broke apart into a thousand pieces and got back together again.

Theos, he had waited because it had been the right thing to do, because his honor wouldn’t let him cheat on his wife even if he didn’t live with her. But, he had never expected it to be this life-changing, mind-numbing experience with her.

Leah was in his blood now, a craving in his gut. He would never have enough of her. Of her lithe body, of her glorious smile, of her sometimes infuriating words.

He had never known this exhilaration as he did with Leah, he had never felt so alive. He had never felt so needy as he did with her. He had never wanted to change, never wanted to risk his emotions as he did with her.

He had never wondered what else he had been missing out on as he did with her.

Running his hands over her shaking form, he hugged her to him. She was so fragile. And yet he felt like he was the one who was risking everything. “Leah, say something,” he whispered into her scalp.

“Hmmm?” she said, lazily snuggling into him.

“You are all right?”

Her mouth opened against his chest. “I want more of you, more of this.”

Laughter burst out of him. The tightness in his chest relented as she vined her arms around his waist, opened her hot mouth against his shivering muscles and kissed him. He let out a long breath, unmanned by her tenderness.

“We’re only getting started, pethi mou,” he said, enfolding her in his arms.

Over the next few weeks, Leah was so busy that she didn’t have a moment to sift through the storm building through her. The night that Stavros had made such explosive love to her, she had asked if they could return home to his estate while they had been in the shower.

It was an intimacy Leah had cherished as much as the sex itself. Every little moment with Stavros, she realized, taught her more about herself.

He had stopped midway, his hands incredibly gentle as they washed her. After he had carried her to the en suite bathroom of his bedroom, turned on the shower and demanded to know if she was hurting anywhere. Had looked so vulnerable when he had said he didn’t usually behave like a rutting animal.

How he believed that she could think that of him when he had honored the vows he had made to her, she didn’t know. But his concern had touched her on a fundamental level.

The first thing the next morning, they had returned here. Once the servants had unpacked for her, and he had carried her from her bedroom to his, declaring in that arrogant tone that she wouldn’t sleep anywhere else but his bed, only then had she realized that she had called it home.

But that’s what his estate felt like to her.

Home.

She had been accepted to present at the Independent Fashion Week in New York in September. When she had told him after Helene had called her personally, he had smiled at her, fierce pride glinting in his eyes, and told her that he wasn’t the least bit surprised.

After a few meetings with Helene and another fashion director, the scale and the scope of her collection was even more than she had dreamed. She had added four more designs to it.

She was on such a constant high, on a ride that only kept going higher and higher that she didn’t want to stop even for a moment to see where it was that she was going or how long she would be able to sustain that momentum.

She worked twelve, fourteen hours to finish her first collection, which was turning out to be better than she had ever imagined. Models came in almost every day now for trials, she had two assistants helping her with the final touches, gowns that were being resized and resewn, and then pressed once finalized…

At the end of the day, she fell into bed exhausted. She put off questions about the future. She ran around the estate, she worked with such feverish compulsion that Stavros had one day locked her in his bedroom after she had almost collapsed in her workroom.

But even through the frenzy of the creative drive that gripped her through the day, the best parts were at night.

Intense, hot, turning-her-inside-out nights with Stavros.

It was as if they were both determined to assuage a hunger of a lifetime every single night. It didn’t matter what time he flew back from Athens, it didn’t matter that sometimes her own work kept her past midnight, he brought her to his bed at all manner of times.

Sometimes, they would both be too exhausted to do nothing but sleep wrapped up in each other, and he would wake her after the edge of sleep was gone. Sometimes, he woke her up in the early morning and was moving inside her before she was completely awake.

He was insatiable, possessive, his touch incredibly addictive.

The one time he had stayed overnight in Athens, a strange panic had gripped her. Suddenly, it was as though she had lost her anchor. She had woken up to the sounds of rotor blades the next morning, her breath painfully hovering in her throat. Had waited for him to come to her.

Morning had given way to noon, and then to a gorgeous sunset. He was busy, he had sent a message when she had inquired.

Even loathing that she was losing some unknown battle of wills, she had gone looking for him once the estate had settled down for the night. She had found him in his office, in the middle of a conference call, his gaze settling on her with a possessive hunger. Yet, he hadn’t moved.

She had had the strangest feeling that he had kept away on purpose. As if it was a test he was conducting. As if he wanted to prove something to himself.

An experiment she had no interest in, she had realized, a test she had lost even before it had begun. How dare he deny her after he had made her addicted to him?

So she had teased him when he had made no move to interrupt the call.

Brazen and bold, she had slowly stripped every single piece of clothing from her body even as he was still on the video call. He had looked at her with darkening eyes, daring her to continue.

Of course, she had never been able to resist a dare, especially when it came to riling, or in this case, arousing Stavros.

He had even held out for a few minutes.

Her skin on fire, her body craving him, she had refused to back down. She had touched herself, her breasts first, rolling her aching nipples between her fingers, imagined it was those rough fingers of his. Like he had begged her to do that first night.

Dark color streaked his cheeks, and the pen he had been holding to make notes had clattered to the ground. But still, he hadn’t given in.

Her throat had felt like parched paper, her grasp on her emotions tenuous at best. She had become a slave to his will. Even worse, she had become a slave to her own need for him.

Throwing her hair back, as she had seen one of the models wearing her own creation do, she had strutted farther into the room. He had lasted another two seconds before he had minimized the screen, marched to her, picked her up, called her his doom, and taken her against the wall, even as the call was going on.

All the while his mouth had covered hers, swallowing her moans and finally the sound of her climax. There had been no finesse to his raw thrusts, there had been nothing of his will left by the time he had climaxed, his skin damp to her touch.

She had won that day. But the fear that she wouldn’t another day, another moment, gathered like a black cloud. Because as invested as he was in their madness, she knew he was retreating. As if she and his desire for her, they were a rope that was slowly binding him and he…he was struggling against it.

He refused to discuss the state of their little deal. Every time she tried to talk of the past or the future, he evaded her or worse, seduced her. And the coward that she was, Leah let him be. Settled for the warmth of his arms, for the heat of his caresses, for the fiery intensity of his passion.

“Are you happy?” she had asked him one morning when he had brought her breakfast in bed.

He had covered her body with his, taken her mouth in such a tender kiss that it had brought tears to her eyes. “I don’t know about happy,” he had said against her mouth with that trademark honesty. The question seemed to have thrown him, but lost in the magic his mouth weaved, Leah hadn’t cared. “But I’ve never felt more alive, agape mou.”

There was something disconcerting about that answer, she remembered thinking.

Almost a month passed by like that. And from the dreamy, drugged state, something else emerged. A tiny sliver of fear for the future. Of what she was letting happen, of what it was going to hold for her and Stavros.

For a few weeks, she had been hinting about going to Paris for a small fashion event that Helene had mentioned. It was like puncturing the bubble they seemed to exist in, but she pushed the matter anyway. Sooner or later, they would have to emerge from it and for her part, she wanted him to acknowledge their relationship outside of his estate.

Finally, the night before the event, he had given in. Surprised her by joining her the next evening. And any thoughts she had that their relationship would change evaporated in the week they had been in Paris.

Leah dragged him on a tour of the beautiful city and shopping while he dragged her back to their luxurious hotel suite on the Champs-Elysées every time the mood struck him. Which was much too often, she had complained once laughingly.

But she hadn’t denied him, not once. She was just as addicted to him as he seemed to be with her.

They had been in Paris a week when, one evening, someone knocked quite rudely on the outer door of their suite.

Leah laughed, and hid her face in Stavros’s chest while he continued to lick and kiss her breasts with no thought to the caller. Soon, she was as lost as he was when he lazily pushed into her and struck a slow, mind-numbing pace toward release. The elegant side table, whose design she had only remarked on earlier, bumped against the wall as his thrusts became harder and faster.

“What you do to me, Leah,” he whispered, leaning into her.

She kissed his sweat-beaded brow when he suddenly stilled.

And Leah heard it—the sound of footsteps coming closer toward their bedroom.

In a movement that was both blurry and genius— because she couldn’t even move a finger, Stavros was off her and pulling on his sweatpants. Had just covered her naked form with a sheet when the double doors burst open.

Arrogantly leaning against the wall, Dmitri surveyed them, the wickedest grin curving his sinful mouth. Heat bloomed over every inch of her as that dark, slumberous gaze took in the state of their undress and their still uneven breaths.

Stavros’s curse, filthy and loud, should have colored the room blue before he dragged her behind him. “Forgotten your manners again, Dmitri?”

Such blistering scorn filled his voice, yet Leah, peeking from behind his shoulder, only saw it bounce off Dmitri’s amused smile. Being the complete opposites they were, Leah had never understood their friendship. Only that it was inviolate.

“Of all your dresses, I think this suits you best, pethi mou,” Dmitri offered with an outrageous wink and Leah couldn’t help but smile.

A growl emanated from Stavros and her gaze flew to him. It was a savage sound she would never associate with him of all the men in the world. His passion was insatiable, never-ending but he hid it under such a civilized facade that she couldn’t believe it the first few days.

He did, and made her do, the wickedest things in bed—which she did with the same spiraling hunger as he did, but outside of bed, outside of sex, he was still far too private.

She knew that, in the past month, Dmitri had wanted to see them, more than once. Wanted to join them either for a dinner, or even for a lazy afternoon at Stavros’s estate. But he had said no every time in that arrogant tone of his. Hadn’t even bothered to make an excuse.

It was almost as though he didn’t want Dmitri to see them as a couple.

Was he still ashamed of her, she wondered now, trying to stave off the hurt it caused. Or did he think it a temporary madness that he didn’t want to share with his closest friend?

“I wouldn’t have had to disturb your connubial bliss,” Dmitri drawled completely unaffected by Stavros’s rising temper, “if you had not done the disappearing act on me. I had to half seduce your location out of your poor secretary. Very uncharacteristic of you, Stavros. Your staff is petrified that you might be dying.”

Stavros turned to her. “Do you want to get dressed, Leah?”

“She should hear this. I wouldn’t have barged in just for anything, Stavros.”

“What is it, Dmitri?”

“Alex Ralston showed up on my yacht today. My security tried to grab him but they weren’t successful.”

Suddenly cold, Leah shivered. Throwing his arm around her, Stavros pulled her into his warm body.

Alex had been Calista’s on-and-off boyfriend. “Alex…you sent him to jail after Calista…”

“We found that he was the one selling drugs that day. He had a long record of possession and substance abuse,” Dmitri replied while Stavros remained stubbornly silent.

“I thought you did that because…” The words trailed off Leah’s lips as she realized how absurd she sounded.

Alex had been the one who had given them to Calista? Charming, easygoing Alex? And in contrast, Stavros had seemed such a monster in her head.

“Get dressed, Leah. Let me talk to Dmitri alone.”

She was so much in panic that she didn’t even say a word. Something flickering in his eyes, Dmitri hugged her, sheet and nakedness and all.

After all these years, what did Alex want now?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

STAVROS HAD BEEN expecting something to strike at the haze in which he had been living for the past month. Something that would wake him up from the dreamlike state he had been functioning in with Leah. Something so painfully real, so achingly raw, it was bound to end.

He expected the novelty of making love to her to wear off. He expected the high of being around her, the high that came with her laughter, with her irreverent humor, with how easily she gave of herself and how possessively she demanded of him, to end at some point.

He expected the amazing light and joy that had pervaded him, even as he had tried to tether and control it, to fizzle out.

Because life didn’t work like that, did it? At least, not his.

It didn’t carry so much joy, so much laughter, so many emotions that had overthrown him the last month. It never had such gnawing hunger, such desperate need to grasp what he could, such panic-ridden drive to control it so that he didn’t become its slave.

But he didn’t think it would come in such a way. He hadn’t thought it would rip his heart out like this and leave him gasping.

That it would wreak on him an avalanche of hurt and inadequacy and pain.

He had thought Dmitri uncharacteristically foolish to even indulge Alex Ralston’s demand to talk to Stavros. Yet, he had just disconnected the call with Alex, a video call that the thug had insisted on.

Nausea whirled in his gut at the things Alex had said about Calista. It was like hearing stories about a stranger, not his sister at all.

All he had known of Calista had been a front, a lie. A lie that had been neatly supported by Leah for so many years. Because Leah had known it all.

And in the sinking morass of his grief, that betrayal cut the deepest. Leah had known and hadn’t whispered a word to him. Even when he had asked it of her.

“Stavros?” Dmitri nudged him.

“Locate him, Dmitri.” He stood up with such force that the desk rattled. “He can’t go to the media with this. Theos, this is Calista… I don’t want her name besmirched like this.”

“I will stop him. Stavros…it’s not your fault. Calista…whatever Ralston told you about her, you couldn’t have known. You did everything you could to help her.”

“I should have known. All along, she had so many problems and I…” A growl escaped his throat.

“Have you ever thought that some of us are beyond help, Stavros? Too broken to be fixed? Giannis said she was just a child when your mother walked out. Whatever Calista needed, you didn’t have it.”

“She needed to be loved, Dmitri. And I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know how. Not then, not now.”

He was the one in pain, and yet Dmitri looked pale. He kept shaking his head as if he could see into Stavros’s head. “Her behavior is not your fault.”

“I wish I could forgive myself as easily as you, Dmitri,” he said, hating himself, hating Dmitri for being so understanding.

He couldn’t numb the gnawing in his gut as the truth solidified. He had never had what it took to begin with.

Was that why he had clung so tightly to doing what was right? Because he hadn’t possessed, hadn’t ever known, his heart?

Beneath Leah’s betrayal, beneath the shock of learning his sister’s truth, only one thing remained.

You are made of stone.

How right Leah had been… If he had ever known it once, he didn’t remember. He didn’t know if he had buried it deep so that his parents’ indifference, their negligence didn’t hurt.

He had never understood Calista, never saw past the facade his sister presented because he had never understood her fears, her pain, her joy. Every time she had mentioned their parents, every time she had expressed her confusion, he had only pushed her to move on, had brushed her away believing that they were better off without them.

Because he hadn’t wanted to dwell on it, because it would mean acknowledging all the wrongs they had done to them, it would mean letting them be a part of who they were.

Again and again, he had closed himself off to her grief, her pain. Until she had decided that he would never understand? Until she had decided, like Leah, that he didn’t have the capability to understand? The capability to love?

In the end, his parents had robbed him of everything.

Even if he forgave Leah’s lies, what did he possess to give her? How long before she would realize the truth? How long before she realized that he had never known and would never understand love?

That he would never know how to give it and take it.

It was two hours before Stavros returned to their suite, two hours in which Leah had become half-crazy wondering what was going on. One look in his eyes, and her heart skidded to her gut.

“Pack your bags. You’re catching a flight to New York in a few hours.”

“What? The fashion week isn’t for another fortnight…”

He stood only a foot away, yet it could have been a thousand miles. Why wouldn’t he look at her?

“It is better for you in New York rather than here with Ralston around. Apparently, he’s very much interested in hearing how I’ve mistreated you.”

“But all my stuff is…” She stopped, his words slowly registering with her.

His cell phone rang and he looked at her finally. “I will ensure that Rosa packs up your stuff with utmost care.”

Rosa was going to pack her stuff, she was going to leave for New York…

Leah stared at the empty space he left behind for a few seconds. The shock slowly blunted, bringing in its wake utter panic.

Throat dangerously close to tears, she found him in the study that offered a breathtaking view of the Eiffel Tower.

He was on the phone, listening, but his gaze stayed on her face. And that’s when Leah noticed the white pallor to his skin.

She would have welcomed his blistering contempt, or even his lacerating fury. But the resignation in his gaze… As if he had lost something precious. As if he had finally given up.

The minute he disconnected the call, she stepped inside.

“If he comes for me, he has to get through you, doesn’t he?” she demanded, anger coming to her rescue. She wouldn’t let him treat her like this again. Not after the last month.

He looked up, a bitterness curving his mouth. “I’ll be busy trying to stop him from taking the story to the media, from turning my life and Calista’s…and yours into a cash cow.”

“What?” she said, fear spewing into her words now.

“If you go to New York, you’ll be free to do as you please. I know how much you don’t like being told what to do. I’ll make sure Ralston doesn’t follow you.”

“Why does it sound like you’re sending me away?” She sounded desperate, pitiful, but she didn’t care. It seemed she had no armor left.

He stood up from the chair, his every movement precise, his skin tautly pulled over those sharp features. There was nothing anymore of the man she had known this last month. The man who had smiled, laughed, kissed her, the man who had looked at her as if he would drown if he didn’t possess her one more time, nothing.

It was as if he was pulling himself back, word by word, second by second, until he became that Stavros she hated again.

Her gut twisting, she walked around the huge desk until he was forced to look at her. Placing her hands on his chest, she asked, “What did I do this time?”

He grabbed her wrists to push her away. But she didn’t let go. She would never hold him again if she let go, the fear clamored through her. “Tell me what’s going on, Stavros. Or I swear I’ll…” she broke off on a sob.

“You’ll what, Leah? Tell a new lie? You have won.” He became stiff, like he was a statue who possessed no feeling, no weakness. “I’ll sign the divorce papers, release your inheritance as soon as possible. You are just Leah Huntington again.” His gaze moved over her features with a hunger she knew he would deny. For all his withdrawal, she had the strangest feeling that he wasn’t untouched. That he was struggling just as she was.

Or it was the delusion she really wanted to cling to, she thought pitying herself.

“There’s nothing binding you to me or to Katrakis Textiles now.”

Her breath whooshed out of her in a painfully long exhale. Legs shaking beneath her, Leah grabbed the table. Tears pooled in her eyes and spilled over. Just breathing became a chore. “You’re punishing me again…”

“Punishment, pethi mou? No. I’m finally freeing us both. Giannis is gone, and you’ve proved beyond doubt that you can take care of yourself, ne? What is left of our relationship, if it could be called that, if we take away my duty and your lies, Leah?”

“The last month—”

“Last month has been nothing but sex. Five years of celibacy and you…it would mess with any man’s head, even a stone like me.”

That he would reduce the last month like that, that he would cheapen what they had shared so easily…she couldn’t even breathe.

Fear stole coherence from her. Slowly, she thought back to how the dreadful afternoon had begun. “What did Alex say?”

“Threatening to go the media with a colorful story about Calista and her monster of a brother who neglected her and then married the heiress… The pictures he has of her, the horrible things he’s threatening to say about her…” Restrained violence simmered in him as he moved away from her. As if he didn’t trust himself to be near her. “The parties, the drinking, the men… Cristos, I didn’t know my sister at all, did I? And you knew it all along.” He turned toward her again, accusation and pain in his eyes.

“She begged me not to tell you, Stavros. Every time you found us at some party, she would beg me to leave her out of it. She asked me to cover…just once more. When she saw you, when she was with you, she…she wanted to be perfect. She was desperate to not lose you. Desperate to not lose your love. She was afraid that you would…”

“All your arguments with me, if you had thrown it once in my face that she was the one—”

The calmer he got, the more she panicked. “I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten until that night. Stavros, I was immature, foolish. I told you, I didn’t know that she was using. I feel sick to my stomach when I think I could have helped, when I could have—”

“What about the last few weeks, Leah? What about when I begged you for the truth about her? What reason could you possibly have to lie after all these years? Were you afraid that I would punish you for her actions? Even after these few weeks, were you just looking out for yourself?”

Her heart hammered away in her chest, her knees trembled beneath her and all she wanted was to be held by him, to see him smile, to do whatever she could to remove that betrayal, that pain from his eyes.

And just like that, the truth struck Leah. In that dark-paneled study in a majestic hotel in one of the loveliest cities in the world, with Stavros looking at her with utter resignation, it came to her.

She was in love with Stavros. A few months ago, she would have cackled hysterically at the prospect. And yet, had she ever truly stood a chance against the man she had discovered him to be?

Despite all the wrongs done to him as a child, he had done his duty. He could cajole and love and support as fiercely as he followed his duty, he could care, even though it was through actions and not words…

Calista had been so wrong in not trusting him, in doubting his love, so painfully unknowing of her own brother…But Leah understood him finally, she knew what a complex and honorable man her husband was.

And knowing Stavros meant loving Stavros, loving his generous heart, his sense of duty, even his rigidly autocratic dictates.

Why else had she risked everything she had always been scared of, this past month, how else would she have thrown herself into this madness with such relish… “After all these years, I didn’t think the reasons for Calista’s death mattered anymore. Not when I was finally…”

“When you were finally getting what you wanted,” he finished and utter fury filled her.

She gasped as it unfurled inside her, this new feeling, sinuously breathing courage into her very veins, filling her with a tremendous energy.

Reaching him, she refused to let him dismiss her so easily. “When, finally, you saw me for what I was, and let me see what kind of a man you were. I thought I should leave the past where it was. I thought…I could have—”

“Your wants, your needs—it’s all about you, isn’t it, pethi mou?”

“For years, it has been, yes. All I thought of since stepping in Athens was protecting myself from pain, from ever having to mourn another loved one again. But not anymore. For the first time in my life, I lied, not for myself, but for you. I lied to protect you, to spare you from this pain of knowing Calista’s reality.

“I lied because I…care about you. I lied because, somehow, you gave me the courage to live without fear, I lied because you made it impossible to not love you.”

His skin pulled into a taut mask, he looked as if she had dealt him an invisible blow. Everything in her scrunched into a painful ball as Leah realized that her words, somehow, had only hurt him even more.

“Say something, Stavros,” she said desperately.

“I didn’t realize until today how ill-suited we are for each other, pethi mou. Even if I continue this charade in the name of Giannis, it won’t be long before we rip each other into shreds. Before there’s nothing but pain left.”

The bridge of his nose, the sculpted planes of his face, the stubble that was already coming in…it hurt to look at him. “Is that any worse than what you’re doing now?” A shuddering gasp left her. “Somehow, I doubt that you can get any more cruel, any more heartless, Stavros.”

“Then you know why our farce of a marriage needs to end,” he finally said after what felt like an eternity of hell. “You have your freedom. Goodbye, Leah.”

For the first time since Giannis had brought him to Athens years ago, Stavros did not return to work after Leah left.

He let Dmitri’s calls go unattended, told his assistant to cancel everything indefinitely, heard from his head of security that a particularly treacherous board member, a distant cousin of Giannis who had always resented that Stavros and Dmitri were the topmost shareholders on the Katrakis board, was planning a coup to take over.

Rumors swirled about that Dmitri and he had fallen out, causing the stock for Katrakis Textiles to sink.

But Stavros, try as he did, still clinging to his wretched sense of duty, couldn’t give a damn. He and Dmitri had slaved night and day to build it into a multimillion dollar industry for over a decade, given it their all because they had wanted Giannis’s legacy to mean something…because they had both wanted something to anchor their lives.

And yet, he did not care if it all crashed and burned. All he wanted to do was shrug off the world and retreat. And he did.

Yet, wherever he turned, there were signs of Leah at his estate.

From the workers at the vineyard to the seamstress who asked if Leah was taking New York by storm, from the trails she had loved running through to the small, inconsequential things she had left lying around the house, like her iPod. She was everywhere.

She was under his skin, in his every breath, she had somehow become an irrevocable part of himself.

The peace he had found on his estate, the rules he had set in place all his life, everything was shattered. He felt empty within and he hadn’t even known that he had something so precious.

It was as if Leah had breathed life into him, showed him what it was to laugh, love and live.

For days, he let himself remember every bleary moment from when his mother had left to when his father had died, and he grieved for Calista. Grieved for the innocence he had never had. For days, he sat in the study in his estate, wandered into Leah’s empty workroom.

And slowly, her words gained strength in him, shifted and morphed his very view of himself.

For the first time in my life, I lied, not for myself, but for you, Stavros. I lied to protect you, to spare you from this pain.

I lied because I…care about you. I lied because, somehow, you have given me the courage to live without fear, I lied because you made it impossible to not love you.

Leah loved him, she had protected him. When had anyone ever thought of him like that?

The Leah that wouldn’t leave him alone the night of Giannis’s death, the Leah that had so innocently and full of hope, asked him if he was happy, the Leah that had teased and aroused him with such stark, possessive need…that Leah who refused to let him deny what they both wanted, needed when he had worried that it was becoming an obsession, a madness, the Leah that had held him tightly, when in the aftermath of making love to her he had confided that he didn’t remember how his mother looked, the Leah that had believed in the sanctity of marriage…

That woman was worthy of a fight, was worthy of a man he could be.

She had made him love for the first time in his life, she made him care, had made him live for himself, made him want with such gnawing hunger.

Had given him a taste of happiness, of pain, of ache, of loss.

She had made him feel everything he had shied away from his whole life. And he wanted to live like that again. He couldn’t go back to being an automatic machine.

Shaking at the very chill in his bones, he leaned his forehead against the glass door looking out into the estate.

In a moment of utter desolation he had admitted to Giannis that night that he had been wrong about Leah, that he had ruined her life. Even facing death, Giannis had smiled, had said that Leah needed him, that he, Stavros, was a man worthy of her… Those words pushed through to the fore, crushing his self-doubt.

Maybe he hadn’t deserved Leah five years ago.

But now, facing his own incapability to love Calista as she had needed, and accepting that, despite his every effort, his parents had somehow damaged him, forgiving himself for not loving Calista as she had needed, he deserved Leah now.

He deserved to be happy, he deserved to think about himself after a lifetime of thinking about everyone else.

Suddenly, Stavros couldn’t live without telling Leah that, couldn’t bear that she was thousands of miles away. Not when he loved her so much.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

HER COLLECTION AT the Independent Fashion Week in New York had gone better than Leah could have imagined in her wildest dreams. Her designs had been called modern, colorful, yet sophisticated. Just last week, with Helene’s advice, she had invested a load of money into creating a lookbook that incorporated line sheets, one that gave buyers and fashion magazine editors a view into her brand.

After a crazily hectic two weeks, she had returned to Athens. When she had knocked at Mrs. Kovlakis’s door and requested the keys to her old flat and the dragon had simply handed them over, she had been both shocked and relieved. One look at the news and she found Dmitri and Stavros and herself at the front and center of it.

Hiding and barely eating, she had slept for a week. All of a sudden, she would find herself awake and looking at her phone, before she realized she was waiting for his call.

Had he so thoroughly washed his hands of her? Had she truly meant nothing to him?

She had cried until she had been disgusted with herself, moped around the flat until one afternoon, Dmitri had almost broken the door down when she hadn’t heard his knocking.

He had taken her out to lunch, plied her with food until she had eaten enough for a month, inquiring if she needed anything.

Did he send you? she had asked, pitifully desperate.

No, he had said with unflinching honesty. You’ve truly proved yourself to him.

Words she would have embraced before now seemed like punishment.

At which point, she had cried and he had sighed and hugged her, and point-blank asked her if she meant to spend the rest of her hard-won freedom like a howling puppy, if she meant to spend the rest of it as the discarded wife of Stavros Sporades, hiding from the world.

Hating him and loving him for it, she had decided enough was enough. After fighting Stavros tooth and nail, she refused to let him win, refused to let herself become a shadow.

She had her whole life in front of her. She had decisions to make about where she would operate, about staff to hire, preparations to make for the winter collection, about her finances and how much of her inheritance she could invest in her business and how much she needed to save for a rainy day. She couldn’t live in some distant, unfamiliar corner of the world because Stavros was here.

The freedom to make her own choices, once she had begun, was heady, exhilarating.

More than one designer house approached her with offers to join them. Loath to compromise her creative vision, she refused all of them in a bold move.

Just as she finally embraced the fact that she was a shareholder in her grandfather’s textile companies, that she was part of his legacy.

She had walked into the legendary Katrakis offices in downtown Athens and attended her first board meeting, her heart threatening to rip out of her chest at the thought of facing Stavros.

That Stavros was absent and she was present created a stir that had made Dmitri smile wickedly. Whispers and innuendoes abounded large, about Dmitri, about Stavros, about her. And the worst of all, about the state of her marriage to Stavros.

It had taken everything she had possessed to get through the day. Especially after she received a message from Stavros’s assistant that he would like to meet her before she left on her trip to Milan the next day. The requisite paperwork would be sent to her lawyer if she could provide a name, she had been told.

Nausea rising in her throat, Leah had headed straight to the ladies’ room.

That was that then. He was going to divorce her. After five years, the bond between them would be broken. He would be free of her and she…of him. He would not be hers, even for a moment, ever again.

That night she went to bed, an ache in her gut.

She dreamed of him, intense, vivid dreams that woke her from restless sleep, breathing hard and aching, damp with need, inconsolable that he would never hold her again.

Violently furious that after demanding that she show him the real her, he had not believed the biggest truth she had ever told him.

He didn’t deserve her, she decided, the lie hollow to her own ears.

Leah arrived at Stavros’s office thirty minutes after ten, having finally fallen into a fitful sleep in the early hours of the morning. Her head hurt, her muscles ached from having thrashed so much.

So when she grabbed the handle and pushed the door open, she was feeling particularly bloodthirsty, as he put it once.

There was no one in his office room. Her heels clicking on the marble floor, she walked around. Her nape prickled and she turned.

Standing at the entrance to his private suite, Stavros studied her.

He looked as he always did, arrogant, implacable, larger than life, except for the haunted look in his eyes. He wore jeans that molded those powerful thighs and a gray shirt that stretched against the muscled expanse of his chest.

He was so achingly gorgeous, so painfully beautiful that her throat closed up. She just stared at him hungrily for several minutes.

“I found the land you were looking at to build a factory.”

Leah flinched at the sight of him, at his raspy voice, at his blank expression. That was the first thing he said to her? Not even hello?

“I don’t need your help,” she said flippantly. “Where are your lawyers?”

“We don’t need them.”

“Then why did you summon me here? Why not just sign the papers and be done with it? Or have you gotten addicted to me begging you for things like cash, sex and the minimum courtesy that you believe me?”

Something slumberous glinted in his gaze. “I don’t remember you begging me for sex.”

“Maybe because it held no meaning to you except for relief after five years of…” He prowled toward her with such dangerous intent that she stopped talking.

“I remember every moment, pethi mou. I just don’t have a memory of you begging me for it. All those nights, and days, not once.” A dark current tinged his words as if he was very much fantasizing the prospect of it now. “You teased me, you taunted me, you seduced me…and I just gave in every time, your willing slave.”

“I’m leaving,” she said, his strange mood making her weak everywhere.

He blocked her way. “Dmitri told me that you attended the board meeting. That you caused quite a stir. A walking powerhouse, that’s what he called you.”

She sent a silent thanks to Dmitri for hiding the ugly crying from Stavros.

“Are you surprised? I will not slink away from what is mine like a coward anymore. I will sit on the Katrakis board, I will launch my label from Athens. I will not hide as if the fiasco of our marriage is my fault.

“I won’t let you browbeat me into anything I don’t want to do ever again.”

He looked tortured, his mouth pinched. “Forcing you to marry me was the biggest mistake I have ever made, thee mou. I can’t believe—”

She had no idea that she had thrown herself at him. That with her weight and fists she had pushed them farther into the rear room of his private suite. Pain, and ache and a bone-deep hunger, everything deluged her.

Tears flew freely down her cheeks as she continued attacking him.

How dare he call knowing her a mistake? How dare he hurt her when all she had wanted was to protect him? How dare he be so heartless when she cared so much about him?

“Do you, agape mou?” he whispered when she hit him in the gut and she realized she had been screaming the words at him. “Do you care so much, Leah?”

She wouldn’t say it again, wouldn’t beg for his love when it had to be hers, when it was what she deserved.

“Leah, pethi mou, look at me,” he begged continuously, yet she couldn’t stop.

She was so afraid that he would disappear if she stopped, so afraid that she would wake up and realize it was a dream. That she would be achingly alone again.

“I’m sorry, yineka mou,” he whispered, without even trying to stop her. “I’m so sorry that I sent you away. I’m so sorry that I didn’t listen to you.”

“You’re a heartless bastard and I should hate you,” she said, with another push and then they were falling into the bed.

“Theos, no more than I hate myself, Leah,” he said on a ragged whisper.

Her breath jarred out of her as Leah landed on top of him. Fear and relief gave way to something else as her mouth lodged in his neck and his arousal pressed against her belly. Moving of their own accord, her legs straddled him, until his hardness pressed against her heated core. Her thighs shivered with the repressed need to ride him.

Her hands in his hair, Leah lifted her head and looked into his eyes.

Their harsh breaths thundered in the silent room, joined by the whisper of the satin sheets.

“I want you to sign those papers and get the hell out of my life. I want to never see you again.”

“I can’t,” he said, sounding almost regretful.

“I do hate you,” she said again, every inch of her desperately craving what he could give.

Only him. Always, only Stavros.

She closed her eyes to lock away the tears and touched her mouth to his.

Familiar and intense, the taste of him made her shiver violently, sent a jolt of electricity through her very veins. She continued kissing him softly until her heart was beating a loud tattoo against her chest, until tears blocked her throat again.

Until all she could touch, breathe and feel was him, until she could be sure that he was here, with her.

“I will never divorce you, Leah. I will never set you free.”

What new madness had he thought of now?

Rolling away from him, she began to slide off the bed. His hand on her ankle, Stavros pulled her back onto the sheets in a deft movement. Struggling to get free, she squealed. And gasped when he covered her body with his.

His weight pressed her into the bed, stealing her breath. Clutching her eyes closed, Leah fought the craving that burst within her belly like a fire. Her arms literally ached to hold him, her body on fire to be possessed by him.

“I have missed you so much, agape mou,” he said, shuddering harshly.

She felt his mouth probe hers softly, slowly, as if asking for permission. Holding her wrists at her head with one hand, he pressed little kisses on the seam of her lips, his warm breath drenching her.

In a needy, hoarse voice that unlocked every last fear in her, he punctured the kisses with words in Greek.

“Please, pethi mou. Let me in.” He swiped at her mouth with his tongue, his body pressing into hers. “I would drown if you would not let me kiss you, Leah, I would stop breathing if you gave up on me now. My life is no life without you in it. Until you brought it to me, I have not known love. Do not take it away now, Leah.”

And the tender gesture, the unvarnished love in his words undid her. Twining her arms around his neck, Leah gave in. He kissed her as if he were truly drowning, with desperate desire.

Lips scraped against teeth, limbs tangled, breathing was secondary as the fire between them consumed them.

“Tell me that I haven’t lost you already. Tell me that you will teach me how to love you, Leah. Theos, it is all I want.”

When she remained silent, he whispered, “I love you, Leah.”

The declaration rang around in the silence, and slowly Leah opened her eyes. The truth of it shone in his eyes, rendering him acutely vulnerable. It was a look she had never thought to see on Stavros’s face.

“You sent me away without a thought to me. I couldn’t believe how cruel you were, how much it hurt,” she said, her mouth trembling. “How easily you could break my heart, reject my love…”

“The news about Calista devastated me, I thought I could never love you like you need to be loved… I stomped on my own feelings, Leah.”

“But you do know, Stavros. You don’t say it in words, you won’t share your thoughts, but your actions…they speak so much. You are incredibly giving, caring, even if you drive me up the wall with your arrogance.”

He traced a finger over her mouth, such tenderness in his eyes that Leah couldn’t breathe. “I will never stop loving you, nor will I ever give you up. I—”

She ran shaking fingers over his brow, pushing back his hair. “When I’m with you, I’m unafraid. All I want is to take risk upon risk, all I want is to live and love you.”

“Then let’s do it, pethi mou.”

Burying her face in his neck, Leah nodded, her head dizzy with euphoria, fear beating a tattoo. He pushed them both off the bed and brought her to the edge of it. While she shivered all over from the intent on his face, he knelt in front of her.

Looked at her with such love in his eyes that fresh tears fell on her cheeks.

“Will you marry me again, Leah?” he asked against her lips. “Will you…choose to spend the rest of your life with me, pethi mou?”

Leah buried her mouth in his throat, swallowed the tightness in hers. “Yes, Stavros. I’ll marry you… Tomorrow, if you can arrange it.”

“No, not tomorrow,” he said, tugging her face up to his.

“Why not? Are you having second thoughts already?”

The ache in his eyes undid her. “I…want you to have the wedding you’ve always wanted. I want to take you out a few times. I want to do all the things you might have wanted to do before you married… I want you to take all the time you want…and until then…” He looked into her eyes and the love she saw there sent her heart to bursting.

She shook her head, instantly understanding how his mind worked. Scooting closer to him, she straddled him and they both groaned. “No… I can’t sleep without you by my side. I can’t bear it if you—”

“You will see me every day. When I make love to you again, you will have chosen to be my wife this time.”

Something in his tone told her how important this was to him. That she marry him, that she become his wife because she loved him. “Three months,” she moaned, tugging his lower lip with her teeth. “Let’s set a date for after three months and no later. I don’t have your patience or your willpower…”

He took her mouth in a hungry kiss that set fire to her claim… “Willpower, yineka mou? Waiting for you to walk toward me in your wedding dress…that’s the only thing that will keep me going.”

EPILOGUE

Three months later

STAVROS HAD NO idea that three months could feel like an eternity. Theos, he must have been insane to set the rule he had because touching Leah and kissing Leah without taking her had been an exercise in torture.

But in the same breath, he was also extremely glad that they had waited. Because Leah was worth every smile, every ache, every moment he had spent thrashing in his bed because he missed her with a bone-deep hunger.

On a beautiful October evening, he waited with his breath hovering in his throat while a hundred guests looked on.

Giannis’s mansion and grounds had been decorated lavishly and he stood under an archway in the garden. Lilies in beautiful arrangements spread their fragrance while the sky glittered a brilliant blue.

Most of the guests had come to see his beautiful bride, the new designer that had shaken the fashion world with her designs—models she had worked with the past couple of months, half the population from his estate, workers from her factory, all because of Leah’s generosity of spirit, her kindness, the depth of her commitment and loyalty.

And finally today, the magnificent woman was going to be his in a bond born out of love and laughter and joy. His heart ached as he remembered how much Calista would have loved to see Leah and him like this…

And there she was, on Dmitri’s arm, walking toward him with sure steps.

His heart threatened to jump out of his chest when he saw her.

She had told him she was going to wear her own creation—the first wedding gown she had ever designed.

She looked utterly fragile and so beautiful that he stared hungrily, desire fisting tight in his gut.

Her long hair was combed away in a stylish ponytail, pearl earrings that had been a gift from Giannis at her ears, and the dress she wore was a demure creation in lace and sheer silk that didn’t bare an ounce of flesh.

The modern, no-frill design hugged her slender body, leaving her arms bare, highlighting the long line of her thighs and legs.

Had she made the outfit more modest because of him? Did she think he wouldn’t like it if it was one of her outrageously sexy, insubstantial creations?

Had he made her doubt his love again?

But one look into her gorgeous, shining eyes and all his doubts perished like so much dust.

They shone with such happiness that he felt a tightness in his chest relent.

They had spent the last three months touring for fabrics, laughing, and teasing each other, learning each other and falling in love all over again, and breathlessly waiting for this day.

He felt his entire world sway and tilt at the love he saw in those eyes, at the way her luscious mouth trembled.

She kissed Dmitri’s cheek and he handed her over to him.

Gripping her fingers with his, he pulled her closer, the scent of her hitting him right in the solar plexus. “I love you, Leah,” he whispered in her ear, without waiting for the priest to begin.

Her breath caught, she ran shaking fingers over his cheek as if she needed to check that he was all there.

“I can’t wait for tonight,” she finally whispered, and pulled back, a wicked twinkle in her eyes.

It was only later that Stavros finally noticed the back of Leah’s dress. Specifically when the photographer had asked her to turn around and smile over her back.

Her gaze holding his, she turned slowly, a coy smile curving her mouth.

Heat pounded his blood, desire hitting him like a tsunami.

Her back was bare, dipping precariously low to the curve of her buttocks, except for a row of white buttons drawing a tempting line down her spine, holding the sheer illusion panel together…

Just the sight of that smooth, bare skin sent heat searing across his own.

He could love her for years to come but his wife would always surprise him, he realized with a smile.

Joining her, he ran his fingers up her spine, a fever overtaking his muscles.

“Ready for your wedding night, yineka mou?” he asked, pressing a kiss to her jaw.

She trembled and turned into his arms. “Do you like the dress?”

He nodded, and picked her up. A hundred cheers went up around them as he walked toward the entrance to Giannis’s house. “I love it. But I apologize in advance.”

Her hands tightened around his nape. “For what?”

“For ripping those delicate buttons. That’s the only way to get it off you, isn’t it?”

Her smile reached into the depths of his heart. He carried her over the threshold and took her mouth in a hungry kiss. “Now you’re mine forever and forever.”

“And you are mine,” she whispered, before claiming his mouth again.

Taken by Her Greek Boss

Cathy Williams

CHAPTER ONE

FOR Nick Papaeliou, the evening was beginning to take on a bizarre, surreal air.

For starters, he was not a man who enjoyed public scenes. He liked to exercise control over every aspect of his life, not least his emotions. And yet, what had happened less than an hour previously? His girlfriend, now relegated to the position of ex-girlfriend, had drunkenly initiated a confrontation that had heralded the demise of their relationship. Of course, he had known for a while that he would have to break off with Susanna, had heard the warning bells begin to ring when her hints had moved from the general arena of proper relationships to the more specific one of wanting to climb off the merry-go-round and settle down before her biological clock began really ticking. But had he listened? No. The intention to finish with her had hovered on the periphery of his consciousness, but he had been in the middle of a highly complex deal and he had stupidly relegated it to the back-burner.

And then the party tonight. Not just the usual boring model bash to which he had grudgingly agreed to go, knowing that it would be the last with her, but a lavish, private dinner hosted by a fashion-designer couple with a passion for social climbing.

The wine had flowed freely and how true it was that alcohol loosened tongues.

He thought back with distaste to Susanna, the tears, the shouting, the pleading—all conducted in front of an audience of roughly forty people.

Naturally he had left, with every intention of heading back to his penthouse apartment in Mayfair where he would be able to forget the nightmarish previous two hours in front of his laptop computer. It would have been the preferred conclusion to an aberrant evening, but…

He looked sideways at the young woman sitting in the back of the taxi alongside him. Here he was. Waylaid by a fresh-faced blonde who had been waitressing at the party and had coincidentally been leaving at the same time as he had.

He had found himself joining her for a coffee at the café close by and over his cup of strong black coffee, with his defences momentarily lowered after his bruising public bust-up with Susanna, had engaged in the rare pastime of sitting opposite a beautiful woman to whom he was not in the slightest bit attracted and actually listening to what she had to say, even though much of what she had told him amounted to a story he had heard a thousand times. The beautiful young woman whose dream was to be an actress. Optimism was written all over her youthful face and flowed around him in waves in her excitable conversation and earnest body language.

God, she had made him feel jaded. When he had told her, as kindly and as tactfully as he could, that he was off limits, he had felt, literally, a hundred years old.

How long, he had wondered, could he continue living the bachelor lifestyle? His father had died when he was still a young man in his twenties and his mother had followed him eight years ago. Was that why? Lack of parental pressure to do the expected thing and father the obligatory two point two kids? Or had his single minded and meteoric rise through the ranks provided him with everything wealth and power could buy while, perversely, creating a world into which no one was allowed to take up residence for any period of time?

He honestly didn’t know. What he did know was that Lily, the part time model who made ends meet however she could while still believing in her dreams, had stirred an unexpectedly almost paternal interest in him.

Which was why, he now contemplated, he was in this taxi with her, having agreed to accompany her back to her place for a nightcap, amused at her palpable horror when he told her that he should really be going back to his place to do a bit of work.

‘No one works on a Saturday in the middle of winter at midnight!’ she had exclaimed, shocked, and he had almost laughed at her naïveté. She thought, he knew, that she was doing him a good turn in making sure that he had some company after his unpleasant incident at the party, to which she, as everyone else, had been witness. She was also, and he could see this in her wide blue eyes, in awe of him. As most people were. It was something he had become accustomed to taking for granted although, at least in this case, he was pretty sure there was no hidden agenda. She didn’t want anything from him and that was refreshing.

The taxi, having wound its way through a myriad deserted streets, all identical in their never-ending rows of unlit terraced houses, finally drew to a stop and, to his further amusement, Lily refused to let him pay, even though she would certainly know him for the billionaire he undoubtedly was.

‘It’s not much…’ she apologised, fumbling in her bag for her front door key.

Nick murmured something suitably polite as she finally opened the front door, but really she was absolutely spot on. It was a house in an area that might, possibly once, have been considered a fairly decent location, but which the passing years had rendered shabby and depressingly uninviting, and stepping inside only served to cement that first impression.

Nick hadn’t been to a place like this for a very long time. He had dragged himself up by his bootlaces, worked like a slave so that he could accumulate the necessary qualifications that would enable him to escape a life of mediocrity in the Home Counties, where his father had eked out a living doing manual work at the Big Houses, as he had liked to call them, the likes of which he would never be able to afford. He had been an uneducated Greek and had never dared to aspire beyond his modest sphere.

Nick had had no intention of following his father’s footsteps. A first at university had been the start and followed by a rise through the financial world that had left his peers, most of whom came from a background of Big Houses, gaping and speechless. Now, he no longer worked for anyone. He had his own financial empire and called his own shots. When he opened his mouth, the world listened and paid heed.

And with vast power and wealth had come all the trappings. The place in the sun, rarely visited. The country house that he visited occasionally, whenever the ferocious demands of work allowed him the time off. The chauffeured car, the helicopter for those times when he needed to be somewhere faster than a train or car could take him, the lavish apartment in the heart of one of the most expensive areas in London.

He had long ago left behind the type of place now confronting him, with its tiny handkerchief of a front garden and, even in the forgiving cover of darkness, its signs of disrepair. And here in the small hallway, although much effort had obviously been made to brighten the interior, the cheerful primrose-coloured paint was fighting a losing battle with dodgy woodwork and carpeting that was no longer tired, but downright exhausted.

While Lily bent to unzip her boots, sighing with relief as she yanked the first one off, Nick turned to shut the front door. He was unaware of the sound of footsteps and only realised that there was someone else in the house when he heard Lily give a little yelp.

‘Rosie! What are you doing up?’

‘Who—’ the voice was unusually husky for a woman ‘—is that?’

Nick turned around and found himself staring into a pair of narrowed blue eyes, which were glaring at him. Then he took in the rest of her—small, especially standing next to Lily, and no model’s figure, although it was hard to tell because she was swamped in a fairly unflattering ensemble of dressing gown behind which peeked what appeared to be some kind of hideous novelty pyjamas.

‘Honestly, Rose, I keep telling you not to wait up for me! I’m a big girl now. I can take care of myself!’

The Rose character, whoever she might be, wore the expression of someone who seriously doubted that statement.

‘I have no idea how you can say that, Lily, when you’ve just waltzed through the door with a complete stranger in tow. At nearly one in the morning. I thought you told me that this was going to be an early one?’

‘It was early…but…Rose, this is Nick. Nick Papaeliou. Maybe you’ve heard of him?’

‘Of course I haven’t heard of him,’ Rose snapped. ‘You know I don’t know a thing about these models you hang around with.’

‘Model?’ Nick couldn’t believe his ears. Nor could he quite believe the way those ferocious blue eyes were scornfully dismissing him. ‘You think I’m a model?’

‘What else?’

‘Oh, Rosie. You have to excuse her, Nick. Rose is very, very protective of me. She thinks I’m going to be gobbled up by a big bad wolf one of these days. But that’s cool. Hey, what else do big sisters do?’

‘She’s your sister?’ Nick stared at the small, round woman who was still glaring at him, although he noticed a faint pink colour crawl into her cheeks.

‘There’s no need to look so stunned,’ Rose said coldly.

‘We’re stepsisters actually,’ Lily explained, smiling. ‘Isn’t it amazing? I mean, you hear so many stories about step-siblings not getting along but Rose and I couldn’t be closer if we were proper sisters.’ She gave Rose an affectionate squeeze. Even without shoes, she was at least six inches taller. ‘Rosie, Nick’s just popped by for a nightcap…would you mind? I’ve got to go to the bathroom.’

Yes, actually, she would mind, but Lily was already vanishing up the stairs, still taking them two at a time, the way she always had even as a kid. Sweet, sunny-natured Lily who thought the best of everyone, even the ones who had Health Hazard written all over their faces. Like this one staring at her, still incredulously digesting the fact that the leggy blonde with the waist-length hair, the one whom he had probably expected to escort home to a suitably empty house, was related to someone who was physically as different from her as chalk from cheese.

Rose stared right back at him. He towered over her and was dangerously good-looking, with a strong, harshly sensual face and black, black hair to match the long black lashes and brooding eyes. It took a lot of will-power not to quail before that singularly unblinking stare. She told herself that he was probably nothing more than a B-grade actor who was accustomed to playing the lead role in hammy TV dramas and didn’t know when to drop the act. She didn’t know why she had originally assumed he was a model. Definitely not pretty enough.

‘So, stepsister Rose, do you always wait up for Lily when she goes out?’

Rose favoured him with a look of haughty disdain. She detected the sarcasm in his voice but she wasn’t going to rise to it. She spun round on her heel and headed for the kitchen.

‘I’m not going to apologise for being rude, Mr Papaeliou,’ she said, the minute they were in the kitchen and he had taken up position on one of the chairs by the pine kitchen table, ‘but Lily’s been messed around by too many shallow, good-looking men and I’m not going to allow it to happen again…’ She must have only just finished making a hot drink for herself because there was no need to boil the kettle. His nightcap, far from being a glass of port or a liqueur, was a mug of coffee handed to him in the manner of someone eager to see him off the premises. She stood in front of him, arms folded. ‘She may not think that she needs looking after, and, sure, she’s more than capable of running her own life, but when it comes to emotions my sister can be very trusting. She doesn’t need to get involved with a two-bit actor on the make.’

Nick, for the first time in his life, felt himself struggling to get a handle on the situation.

‘Two bit actor?’

‘What else? You might play the action hero in whatever third-rate movies you’ve been in, but you can drop the macho act. It doesn’t wash with me. All I know is that Lily is a sucker when it comes to a good-looking man with a few chat-up lines, but they never stay the course and she’s had her heart broken too many times…’

Two-bit actor? Action hero? The woman had the barefaced audacity to make him sound like a comic-book character! But he was certainly not going to allow himself to be dragged into a stand-up fight with a woman with the personality of a Rottweiler. ‘Hence you’re her self-appointed watchdog. That’s very noble of you,’ Nick said coolly. ‘Does Lily appreciate your over-zealous concern? Or do you save these little speeches for when her back’s turned?’ He placed the mug on the table without drinking any of the coffee. ‘I hate to burst your bubble, but I’m not an empty-headed male model out to sleep with the nearest attractive woman, nor am I a two bit actor with an identity problem.’

‘No? Well, it doesn’t matter. Model, actor…creative director with an empty casting couch…it’s all much of a muchness. Lily’s just emerged from a relationship that ended badly and I’m making sure that she doesn’t get taken in by another man with too much looks and too few scruples for his own good. I wish there were a more polite way of warning you off, but there isn’t.’

Nick was accustomed to women pandering to him, hanging onto his every word, courting him with their feminine wiles. Could his night go any more off course? From a showdown that, inevitably, would reach the gossip pages in some rag, to a confrontation with a perfect stranger who was either partially unhinged or just too plain bloody outspoken for her own good.

Before he could reply to that blazing, generalised condemnation, Lily burst into the kitchen, apologising profusely and winningly for taking so long, but she’d just had to have a quick shower because she’d felt hideously grubby and knew, just knew that she’d stunk of cigarette smoke because everybody, but everybody there had been smoking and not all of it the run-of-the-mill tobacco.

Even in the early hours of the morning and after a long day doing a tiring job, she still managed to look incredibly fresh and vital and hopelessly young. It was ludicrous that her sister could imply that he, Nick Papaeliou, who could have any woman he wanted, would be attracted to Lily.

‘Have you two been getting to know one another?’ Lily asked brightly and Nick, looking at Rose from under his lashes, saw her glance with muted antagonism at him. Lily helped herself to some water from the tap and then turned around and perched against the counter so that she could look at them both.

‘Oh, absolutely,’ Nick drawled smoothly, giving Rose a slow, meaningful smile. ‘Like a house on fire…’

‘Oh, great!’ She turned to Rose. ‘Poor Nick broke up with his girlfriend tonight and it’s always nice to be in company when you’re down in the dumps.’

The meaningful smile slowly disappeared as Rose raised her eyebrows and nodded her head slowly.

‘I was far from down in the dumps, Lily.’ He tried to smile that one off, but he was irritably conscious of her sister’s eyes fastened on his face. ‘In fact, our relationship was on its way out. Susanna only did what I myself would have done the following day.’ How was he now having an inappropriately private conversation with two women he had never seen in his life before tonight?

‘Why would you go to a party with someone you wanted to ditch?’ Rose asked innocently and Nick gritted his teeth together. ‘I mean, the poor woman probably thought that you really cared about her.’

‘If you knew Susanna, the very last word you would use to describe her would be poor.’

‘Still…’ Rose allowed that one little word to drop into the silence.

Looking at her, Nick momentarily forgot Lily’s presence. ‘Still…what?’

‘Must be awful to break up with someone you care about in front of other people. I always think that when I open the newspapers and they’re full of some poor celebrity couple who end up being forced to wash all their dirty linen in public. And in a way, that’s not even as bad as the dirty linen being washed in front of friends…she must have been feeling pretty desperate…’

Lily was watching this interchange with a certain amount of bewilderment.

‘And on that note…’ Nick stood up. Surprisingly, exchanging barbs with Rose had so completely absorbed his attention that nothing else had occupied his mind. Not Susanna, not work, and he had completely forgotten Lily’s presence even though she had been standing in his direct line of vision.

‘Oh, dear…leaving so soon? Well, shall I call a cab for you? You won’t find one here, you know. It’s not central enough. Lily…’ Rose looked at her sister ‘…you look done in. Why don’t you hit the sack and I’ll wait up until Nick leaves?’

‘Don’t be silly, Rose.’ She yawned widely. ‘How can I invite Nick here for a nightcap and then disappear off to bed?’

‘I have already given him a nightcap. It was called a cup of coffee.’

‘Rose doesn’t do an awful lot of drinking…’ Lily smiled at Nick ‘…do you, Rosie?’

‘I’m sure Mr Papaeliou isn’t interested in my alcohol consumption.’ Lord, but she sounded prim and proper.

‘The name’s Nick,’ Nick said irritably.

Rose ignored him. ‘There. You’re falling asleep on your feet, Lily. Go to bed. I’ll see Mr Pa…Nick…out.’

‘Well…’

‘I can lie in in the morning,’ Rose insisted. ‘You know you always go to the gym first thing.’

‘S’pose…’

Rose guided her sister in the direction of the staircase so that the temptation of bed was just a little more irresistible. ‘Well nothing. You’ve been on your feet for the better part of the day while I’ve been here, just lolling around and taking it easy.’

‘If you’re sure…’

Oh, boy, Rose was absolutely sure. She gave Nick a gimlet-eyed stare, but as soon as Lily had vanished up the stairs he removed his jacket and lounged against the wall, looking at her.

Rose, all at once and unbidden, became acutely conscious of her inappropriate garb. Something about the subdued lighting in the hall, the knowledge that Lily was upstairs, probably about to crawl into bed, the way he was looking at her in that perfectly still way…She tightened her dressing gown around her and clung onto her virtuous sense of authority. Revealing even a glimpse of her nightwear, namely pyjamas patterned with prancing reindeer, which had been given to her as a Christmas present by a friend who specialised in silly gifts, would undermine everything she now wanted to convey.

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, moving towards her, which, for some reason, she found horribly disconcerting, ‘you’re about to resume your attack, having frogmarched Lily to bed.’

‘I did not frogmarch her.’

‘As good as. So come on, then, let’s call a taxi and get it over and done with.’ He followed her into the kitchen, watched as she sat down and scrolled through the address book on her mobile phone, then made the call. While she did, she looked at Nick and tried not to let his presence overwhelm her, because even after such a brief spell in his company she knew, could just sense, that he was the sort of man who could inspire abject fear should he want to. Not exactly a people person, she thought nastily. The sort of man who picked up women and dropped them without a backward glance or a twinge of guilt. Like the poor Susanna who had been fired up enough to make a fool of herself in front of her friends.

They had fifteen minutes to talk and Rose wasn’t going to waste a single one of those minutes, but before she could utter a word Nick strolled towards her, cornering her in her chair so that she could feel the full, undiluted power of his personality.

‘But before you say anything, I think it’s my turn, don’t you?’ He smiled.

Rose refused to be intimidated. Just who did he think he was anyway? She made herself breathe evenly. Up close like this, his eyes were the deepest of greens, the colour of the fathomless sea. Right now the fathomless sea was revealing some very icy depths.

‘I think you should get a life,’ Nick said grimly, ‘and let your sister lead her own. Is it natural for you to wait up for her like a mother hen? Making sure she gets home safe and sound? You may think it natural. I, on the other hand, consider it sad, as would most people.’ He couldn’t believe he was having this conversation. Did he care what this woman thought of him? Did he care what anyone thought of him? True freedom, he had always thought, was the freedom from caring about other people’s opinions. So why the hell was a pair of defiant blue eyes making him want to justify himself?

Rose blushed and for a few seconds was lost for words. Somewhere at the back of her mind, she knew that he was making sense, but looking out for Lily was a habit born of time and one that she couldn’t seem to let go. Their parents, her mother and stepfather, had died when they were still very young and they had gone to live with their aunt and uncle who were, as they were fond of saying, travellers in search of the meaning of life. Rose had discovered that this basically meant that they moved from pillar to post at a whim, with the practical concerns of two young people being only a minor technical hitch.

Nearly seven years older than her stepsister, Rose had been the sensible one who had made sure that Lily had someone grounded to whom she could turn and so, from the age of ten, she had become accustomed to looking out for her sister. But now Lily was twenty-two. Did she really still need the sensible older sister to wait up for her?

‘I don’t care what you think.’

‘What do you think your sister would say if she knew that you were warning me away?’

‘I think she would see it for the loving gesture that it is.’

‘Or maybe she might see it as an infringement of her right to lead her life the way she sees fit.’

‘Who are you,’ Rose spluttered, ‘to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do?’

‘Well, not a male model nor an actor, nor, for that matter, a seedy film director with an empty casting couch.’ He moved away from her chair and sat down, but pulling the kitchen chair close to hers so that there was no escaping his stifling presence. Where was he going with this particular piece of justification? he wondered.

‘I don’t care what job you do, Mr Papaeliou…’

‘I’m in finance, as a matter of fact. And believe me, when it comes to women, I don’t need to entice them with an empty casting couch.’

‘Whatever you do doesn’t change the fact that you’re a man who can break up traumatically with a woman, look around you, and within minutes be on the trail of another notch for your bedpost.’

Nick was enraged. Never had he been the object of such an unprecedented attack by someone who didn’t know him. Without vanity or pride, he could say that people tiptoed around him, the only exceptions being women at the end of a relationship who could, like Susanna, become hysterical and accusatory, but that was something he had always easily dealt with because, and his conscience was utterly clear on this point, he never made the mistake of making promises he would later fail to keep. He never spoke of love or allowed ideas of permanence and commitment to blur the edges of a relationship. He was speechless now at her sweeping assumptions, but absolutely through with defending himself and he stood up and began walking out of the kitchen while Rose gathered herself and followed him.

She had exhausted her argument and now there was nothing left to be said. Nick obviously thought the same thing because he stuck on his coat in silence, only looking at her when he was about to leave, with his hand on the door knob, in fact.

Rose pulled her dressing gown even tighter around her. In the half light, the man was frighteningly sexy and she felt an unwelcome shiver race down her spine, like the light, trailing touch of a finger. No, he certainly wouldn’t need an empty casting couch to attract women, she thought. He just had to look at them. She harnessed her thoughts back to her sister and primly congratulated herself on spotting a heartbreaker and trying to do something about it.

‘Thanks for the coffee,’ he said coldly, ‘and the warning. Take a tip from me—get a life, spend your Saturdays doing something and then maybe you wouldn’t work yourself up into a lather over your sister and what she’s getting up to. I’ll wait outside for the cab.’

With that he opened the door and, with perfect timing, the taxi pulled up.

Infuriated and insulted he might be, but Nick was hardly aware of the drive back to his house. There was a message on his answering machine. He played it back to discover that it was from Susanna, apologising in a trembling voice. He erased it without bothering to hear it fully out.

Damned Rose! Lurching out of nowhere like a furious little avenging angel, and now he couldn’t erase her from his mind. Experienced as Nick was in compartmentalising his personal life, he was sourly aware that the abrasive woman had rubbed him the wrong way to such an extent that he spent the better part of what remained of the night brooding and not even thoughts of work were sufficiently tantalising a distraction.

The furious avenging angel, less furious now as she lay in bed some twenty minutes after she had slammed the front door behind him, stared up at the ceiling and glumly admitted to herself that the man had got under her skin. Get a life. The taunt rankled because it had hit its target with the unswerving accuracy of a guided missile. Twenty-nine years old, as good as, and here she was, wearing ridiculous pyjamas and still playing caretaker to a sister who no longer needed caretaking.

Where had all the party times gone? Had there been any? Tony and Flora, as her aunt and uncle had insisted they be called, had done everything to encourage a wild and carefree lifestyle. Life, she had been told so often that she knew the script off by heart, was a wonderful and exciting place to be approached with curiosity and zest. Education was fine within reason, but the greater education was the Education of Life, which could loosely be translated into The Lifestyle of a Nomad. It had suited Tony and Flora but to Rose it spelt sickening upheavals and she had fought a rearguard action through her quiet rebellions. She had developed an aversion to pulses and soya and had insisted on burgers and fries, had immersed herself in her books, studying until her aunt and uncle had finally stopped telling her to go out and have some fun, had refused to wear the gypsy skirts and patchwork coats garnered from Oxfam shops, more through a healthy sense of self-preservation than personal dislike, and had made sure that Lily was as grounded as it was possible for her to be considering their weird lifestyle.

And in between all that, the parties had never happened and by the time Tony and Flora had zoomed off in their camper van, headed for the Cornish coast, where they still now lived, the ability to abandon herself to the freedom of youth had slipped past her. She had gone to university, worked hard and set her sights on achieving everything that she felt she had lacked in her formative years. Security.

Very important. For her. And for Lily. Even if Lily gave no thought to it. With the sort of lifestyle that she led, doing jobs off and on, trying out for parts in plays or commercials, most of which she never got, she needed at least one area in her life upon which she could rely and, having seen her sister on her roller-coaster rides with unsuitable men, Rose was determined to make sure that she at least provided Lily with a core of emotional stability in her chaotic world.

Of course, rushing in with dire words of warning the day after wasn’t going to work, so Rose prudently decided to leave the matter alone for a while and then, on one of the rare nights when they were both in and sharing a bowl of pasta without Lily having to rush off or Rose having to work late, she said, tentatively, ‘Seen anything more of that guy…can’t quite remember his name…the one who brought you back after that party a couple of weeks ago…?’

Lily, twirling some spaghetti round her fork, looked at Rose and grinned. ‘You mean Nick, Nick Papaeliou…how on earth could you have forgotten his name, Rosie? I don’t think anyone’s ever forgotten his name before. I’ve seen him twice, actually.’

Rose spluttered on a mouthful of pasta and cleared her throat with some water. ‘Twice! That’s twice more than I thought you had, considering you never mentioned a word to me.’

‘I meant to tell you, Rosie, but…’

‘But what?’ she asked casually, thinking of that dark, cynical face and stabbing an errant mushroom with her fork. She was reading guilt in the way her sister’s eyes shifted away from her.

‘I just thought you might give me a hard time. Nick got the impression that you didn’t much care for him.’

‘Me?’ Rose laughed carelessly. ‘Rubbish—the man’s obviously paranoid.’

‘Oh, Nick wouldn’t be paranoid about anything, Rosie. I mean…he’s got everything anyone could ever want or need. Apparently you thought that he was a two-bit actor.’ Lily giggled. ‘Wish I could have been a fly on the wall to have seen his expression when you said that. He looked outraged even when he repeated it to me.’

‘I admit I may have mistaken him for someone in the acting profession,’ Rose said carefully. ‘I don’t mean to sound the alarm bells unnecessarily, Lily, but he didn’t strike me as the most reliable man in town.’

‘What do you mean—“reliable”?’

‘Oh, the steady-as-a-rock kind. I just think that it’s so easy to be impressed by someone for all the wrong reasons. They may be good looking or rich…and in fact they could just be bad news.’

‘And I do have a history of going with the wrong guys,’ Lily admitted ruefully, which was Rose’s cue to breathe a sigh of relief and nod her head in vigorous agreement. ‘But you’re quite mistaken about Nick, Rosie. Honestly, I’m not impressed by how he looks or what he has…he’s just a very nice guy.’

Nice? Nice? Were they talking about the same human being?

Then it occurred to her that he probably was a very nice man to Lily. A stunning face and a sexy body probably turned him into a very nice man indeed. On the other hand, he had had no reason to be nice to her and so had shown his true colours. He could give lessons on arrogance if her sister only but knew.

‘If you got to know him a little bit better, then you would agree with me, you really would. In fact…’

‘Um?’

‘Well, I was going to actually mention this to you later…but…and this is the sort of guy he is, really cool…he’s invited both of us to a bit of a bash next Saturday. Even though you called him a two bit actor…’ another mini fit of giggles giving Rose a breather in which to digest this bolt from the blue ‘…he still stressed that he wanted us both to go along. Isn’t that sweet? We’ll have to go shopping. Apparently he’s having something small at a very exclusive club he owns…anybody who’s anybody’s going to be there. And us! How exciting is that?’

‘Not very,’ Rose said, panicked. ‘I mean…I’m not sure at all…I don’t think…’ Just the thought of something small at a very exclusive club owned by Nick Papaeliou was enough to bring her out in a cold sweat.

‘I won’t let you just write him off without a second chance, Rosie.’ Then Lily pulled out the most ancient emotional trump card in the deck. ‘If you really cared about me the way you say you do, then you’ll come…’

CHAPTER TWO

NICK HELPED HIMSELF to another drink. He felt restless. The party that had been arranged specifically for the benefit of Lily, though that was something she would never know, was in full swing. He had asked all the movers and shakers in the world of theatre, teased their palates by throwing in a few big names in business, the sort of men and women who were interested in promoting the Arts and were willing to put their money where their mouth was, and the supermodels were really the icing on the cake.

Not a single person had declined the invitation, even though it was very much a last-minute affair. Parties thrown by him were few and far between and had enough cachet to attract even the most sought-after celebrities.

Unfortunately, the belle of the ball, so to speak, had still not arrived. Nor had her sister.

Nick’s gaze strayed once more to the door and he looked at his watch. It didn’t take a genius to work out why they were late. Rose had either decided not to come or else had employed delaying tactics. It would have been a hell of a lot easier if he had not asked her along, but his memory of their last encounter had preyed on his mind and eventually he had worked out that inviting her, letting her see for herself how little he needed to pursue a woman because of her looks, would even out the score. She had dismissed him and Nick Papaeliou didn’t like being dismissed. He particularly didn’t like being dismissed for the wrong reasons.

He was still staring at the door when it opened. He saw Lily first, exquisite in a pale blue dress that was very simple, just a short silky shift with a very respectable round collar, saw her look round the room, searching him out, and he found himself trying to stare behind her to see whether Rose had come or not.

He finished his drink and headed towards them and as he neared them he saw her, half ducking behind the door.

‘You’re here.’ A warm smile for Lily and then he stepped around her to where Rose was nervously hovering just out of sight of the crowd. ‘And so are you. I’m surprised. I thought you might decide that this wasn’t the sort of thing you were interested in attending.’

How right he was. Over four days, Rose had made several futile attempts to wriggle out of her sister’s rash promise that they would both be overjoyed to attend whatever posh party Nick had arranged. She had valiantly plugged the Nothing To Wear excuse, which had been overruled before it had even had time to gain the necessary momentum, then had come a pious, self-sacrificing But I Wouldn’t Want To Get In Your Way, and when that had fallen on deaf ears she had resorted to the truth, which was that she was totally uninterested in those sorts of things, big parties full of people talking at one another and peering around to see if somebody more interesting happened to be lurking on the horizon.

The truth was that she didn’t want to see Nick. She disapproved of his involvement with her sister and she bitterly resented his arrogant, insulting response to her perfectly reasonable request that he take his attentions elsewhere.

Now, as she looked at him, she felt all that resentment gathering pace, like a snowball turning into an avalanche.

He looked magnificent. White shirt, black trousers, but instead of looking conventional he looked darkly, broodingly, raffishly sexy. Something about the way he had rolled the sleeves to his elbows. Or maybe it was his colouring that did it.

Rose shuffled away from the comforting wall that separated her from the rest of the crowd inside and tried not to scowl.

‘It isn’t,’ she said shortly.

‘Well, don’t hide away out here, you two. Come inside and meet all the beautiful people.’ Okay, he knew that that would probably send her nervous system into furious overdrive, but he couldn’t help himself.

Lily, of course, responded with predictable enthusiasm, happily taking the arm he offered, while her sister looked at his other arm, also being proffered, and ignored it.

She felt awkward enough in her outfit without having to suffer the indignity of everyone looking at them, puzzling out who the short, dumpy woman in the black dress was. Lily might hang off his arm and look as though that was her rightful place. Rose, on the other hand, knew that were she to hang off his other arm the effect would be just the opposite. So she walked a little distance apart, grateful that Lily was keeping up the conversation with her bubbly chatter.

‘I’ll get you two a drink, shall I?’

‘Ooh. A glass of champagne would be great, Nick.’ Lily’s eyes were everywhere, like a kid in a toy shop.

‘And for you?’

Rose met his amused eyes steadily. ‘I’m fine just at the moment.’

‘No, you’re not. I’ll get you a glass of wine. It’ll help you to relax.’

‘I’m perfectly relaxed,’ Rose lied, and he grinned broadly at her.

‘In that case, you’re giving an excellent imitation of someone who would rather be anywhere else in the world but here.’

He disappeared, feeling suddenly invigorated. He had never prided himself on his altruism. Sure, he gave massive donations of money to charity, but all of that he left to his financial department. In the case of Lily, he was doing a good deed for which he would get nothing in return. Except her gratitude, most probably, although gratitude was something he never requested from anyone and rarely appreciated. Yes, indeed, being Mr Good Guy was proving to be a very enjoyable novelty.

Of course, he mused, a little gratitude from her sister might be pretty satisfying.

He caught himself scanning the room, making sure that Rose was where he had left her and, sure enough, she was, although Lily was beginning to look a little edgy. By the time he made it back to Rose, it was to find her standing on her own.

‘Lily’s disappeared,’ she greeted him.

‘So I see.’

‘She recognised some people from her last stint in the theatre.’

‘Rude of her not to introduce you to them.’

‘I…I told her to go ahead.’ Rose looked at him defiantly. ‘It’s important that she tries to make a few connections. Apparently, that’s how it works in the acting business. You can’t come to a do like this and huddle on the sidelines.’ She accepted her glass of wine while he deposited the unwanted champagne on one of the many handy chest-height tables that dotted the room. Tall bar stools were positioned by some of the tables, but most of these were unused. Rose supposed that sitting down wasn’t conducive enough to mingling.

‘No. It’s all about networking,’ Nick agreed.

‘And I really don’t want to keep you from that.’

‘I have no need to network.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s nothing I need from anyone here. They are my guests and a good time will be had by all because they offer each other opportunities. The people in the acting profession will be networking with the businessmen who make their world tick financially, the businessmen will be lusting after the models, the models will be intrigued by the celebrities—’

‘And you will observe them all.’

Nick returned his gaze to her face, which was cool and assessing. He frowned.

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘You’re like a scientist looking at the rest of the world through a microscope, examining interesting little bugs.’

‘You know,’ he drawled, ‘maybe I shouldn’t let you loose in the room, not with that knack you have of rubbing people up the wrong way.’

Rose flushed. ‘I didn’t realise that I was rubbing you up the wrong way. I was just making an observation.’

‘The only way to succeed in life is to develop the ability to read other people.’ He looked at her carefully and realised that he was intrigued by her personality, proving yet again to himself that he needed a little novelty in his life. First Lily and now her sister. Making money was predictable. Closing deals brought an adrenaline rush, yes, but it was something that was over quickly. And women…hardly any surprises there. Until now. He decided that he would spend a few more minutes with her, sparing her the trauma of mixing, in other words doing her a good deed.

‘Oh, yes?’ she enquired politely and he frowned at her, unimpressed with that hint of mild boredom in her voice.

‘Take yourself, for example.’ Oh, yes, that did the trick. He could almost see her begin to bristle. ‘Here you are, hating every minute of this party, dragged along by Lily who, in her own sweet way, is as stubborn as a mule—’

‘I’m not sure where you’re going with this. I’ve already told you that this isn’t my sort of thing—’

‘And you would love to put yourself firmly above everyone here, but I’ll just bet you feel awkward and gauche. Am I right?’ Since when did a woman find his company boring? It was inconceivable.

‘No. No, I don’t…’ She should never have worn this black, shapeless dress. Tall, skinny people could pull off shapeless because everyone would know that, underneath, they had rangy, slender bodies. And, yes, she did feel awkward and gauche, but there was no need to have the fact pointed out to her. ‘Anyway, why did you ask me along if you knew that I wasn’t going to enjoy myself? If you’re such a brilliant reader of people, you must have known that I wouldn’t fit in with this crowd.’

‘It’s always good to face your fears.’

‘Oh, so you are doing me a favour, in other words.’

‘And I notice you aren’t suitably grateful.’

Rose downed the remainder of her wine and snorted in an appropriately unfeminine way. She picked up the champagne that he had left on the table and swallowed a mouthful, drawing in her breath as the bubbles went down. The little glittery black bag that she had borrowed from Lily, and which she was clutching in her left hand, seemed a ridiculous accessory. Her skin crawled at the thought that he was laughing at her, finding her awkward and gauche. The champagne seemed to be finished and she seriously contemplated another drink.

‘I’m going to have to circulate now.’

‘Don’t let me stand in your way.’

‘Oh, but you are,’ Nick drawled smoothly. Two glasses on the trot had brought a pink flush to her cheeks. ‘I’m running this show and it’s my duty to make sure that no one is left standing next to the wall on their own, quietly drinking themselves into a stupor.’

Rose felt the colour crawl into her face as her role loomed before her in all its unmistakable hideousness. She was Lily’s chaperone and her host’s burden. He would fob her off on one of his guests or else deliver her back to her sister because he thought that if he didn’t, she would end up making a fool of herself. Mortification replaced the light headed sensation induced by the wine and champagne and brought her crashing back down to the reality crowding around her.

‘I’m not going to drink myself into a stupor,’ she snapped. ‘You needn’t worry that I’m going to embarrass you in front of your glittering guests.’

‘Embarrass me?’

‘By drinking too much and falling into a heap on the floor.’

‘Why would I be embarrassed if you make a spectacle of yourself?’ He sighed impatiently and led her to one of the bar stools at the table closest to them. The woman was difficult and tactless and of course he shouldn’t concern himself with her, but he felt an irrational need to take her under his wing. Because, he told himself, she was Lily’s sister and while he might not be embarrassed if Rose got drunk and made a fool of herself, her sister almost certainly would. So, gentleman that he was, he would forgo his duty to circulate and spend a little time with her instead. No hardship. The crowd seemed to be doing splendidly without his input. The wonders of limitless alcohol, he thought. And of course the seduction of preening and strutting in front of people who counted. He had been keeping a watchful eye on Lily. Next to some of the more seasoned networkers, she was holding her own and drinking, he noticed, remarkably little. A wise head on young shoulders.

‘I thought you were going to mingle with your guests,’ Rose said, then, as if giving things a second thought, she sighed into the glass of orange juice that had mysteriously appeared in front of her. ‘I’m not being a particularly nice person, am I?’

Nick shook his head, relaxing and slinging one arm over the slatted back of his bar stool.

‘Well, nor are you!’

He smiled and raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s the worst apology I’ve ever heard.’

‘It wasn’t meant to be an apology.’

‘Oh. You mean you were just making an observation about yourself.’

Rose decided to change the subject altogether. When he looked at her she felt simultaneously incredibly self-conscious, which was maddening, and resentful of him for making her feel that way.

‘It’s a very nice place you have here.’

‘Oh, don’t tell me you’re going to go all polite on me now.’ This happening party of his seemed to be a long way away.

‘How on earth did you make so much money?’

‘Ah. That’s more like it. Crashing through those flimsy barriers called tact and really speaking your mind without bothering to gift-wrap anything.’

‘You did tell me not to be polite.’ Rose, who was not accustomed to flirting, was uneasily aware of a certain undercurrent between them that was thrilling and frightening at the same time. As were those amazing eyes of his, resting thoughtfully on her face. She knew that she was just being stupid but her heart was thudding inside her like a hammer and everything, all her senses, seemed heightened, stretched taut like a piece of elastic.

‘So…?’ she persisted.

‘Worked my way up.’ Nick nodded to one of the waiters who were invisibly collecting empty glasses and asked him for a whisky and soda.

‘Up from where?’

‘This is really a very boring story.’

‘You mean you don’t like other people observing you under their microscope even though you enjoy observing them under yours.’

Meaning that personal confidences were not part of his routine when it came to women. However, his history was no secret. Anyone could access its bare bones from the thousands of entries to be found on him on the Internet. Where was the harm in saving her the bother of looking him up, if her curiosity got the better of her?

‘A simple tale of a Greek immigrant who fell in love with an English beauty,’ he said casually. Did anyone know how his parents had sustained him? Had faith in him? ‘They worked all the hours God made to make ends meet and to put me through private school.’ Well, that was no big confidence. It was there in his profile somewhere.

‘That’s wonderful.’

‘Is it?’

‘Of course it is.’ She rather thought that he would have done just fine whatever school he had attended, but, compared to her background, it must have been marvellous to have had parents who would have been willing to do whatever it took for their child to pursue a proper education.

‘Where are they now?’

‘No more. They both died a long time ago.’ He looked away, annoyed because this was all in the past and why the hell was he talking about it anyway?

‘I’m sorry.’

‘And I do need to actually mingle with the people I have invited here.’ He stood up and looked down at her. ‘I can introduce you or I can leave you here on your own. Take your pick.’

So that brief truce between them was over. Rose was quietly relieved. Just then, she had felt something sneak up on her, something unwanted that had made her feel giddy and out of control.

‘I’m fine,’ she told him with a distant smile. ‘You go mix. I’ll have a hunt around for Lily. Sorry for having taken up too much of your valuable time.’ When it came to sarcasm, she was as good as him any day.

Anyway, it was much easier now. Nearly everyone there was mellower by a fair few glasses of champagne. They barely noticed her skirting through them. In fact, Rose felt virtually invisible.

She found Lily in the middle of a small group of men, not saying much but paying a lot of attention, and very sober. That was good. For Rose, she would leave this evening behind and return to her normal life. For Lily, this was a chance to meet people, to get her face known and, for her sake, Rose hoped that the evening would turn out to be a success.

She hovered briefly on the fringe, then wandered through the crowd and, after a couple more glasses of wine, found that chatting to them wasn’t the nightmare she had predicted. Somewhere Nick was lurking, although she couldn’t actually see him anywhere.

Like Cinderella, she was ready to leave by the stroke of midnight. She seemed to be in a minority of one. The drink was still flowing, her sister was absorbed talking to a couple of guys, her face fresh and animated, and Rose had had enough. She had listened to people talk about other people, had eavesdropped boring conversations about scripts that had never got off the ground and arguments with directors who didn’t know what they were talking about and lottery grants that should have gone to art projects but had ended up going to crazy organisations that wasted the money and went bankrupt within two years. She had eaten the most amazing finger food she had ever tasted, served by the most attentive staff she had ever seen, and refused enough glasses of wine or champagne to fill a cellar.

After fifteen minutes of trying to attract Lily’s attention, Rose gave up and headed out of the room in search of a breath of fresh air.

Outside was a corridor that circled the club area and off which, like little nodules from a main stem, were rooms behind which were probably offices, although Rose couldn’t tell because the doors were all shut. The floors were pale cream marble, merging into the pale cream marble of the walls, along which hung abstract paintings that looked particularly unappealing in the subdued lighting.

She drifted along, deciding to give her sister precisely half an hour more networking time before dragging her out of the place, and was about to head back when she spotted the light from under the door. It was just a narrow strip, but in the relative darkness of the corridor as bright as a beacon and she didn’t hesitate. She walked right towards it and pushed open the door. She hadn’t known what to expect but she certainly hadn’t expected to find Nick there, installed in front of his computer and surrounded by all the paraphernalia of a home office.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, backing out, but he had already pushed his chair away from the desk and was pinning her in her tracks just by looking at her. A further, more elaborate apology formed somewhere in her mind but didn’t quite manage to connect with her vocal cords, which seemed to have seized up.

In the intervening silence, he propped his feet up on his desk and relaxed back, hands folded behind his head.

‘Looking for something?’ His dark eyebrows rose in amused enquiry and Rose cleared her throat.

‘No. I just happened to be…’

‘Escaping all the fun and laughter? Come in and close the door behind you.’ He paused. ‘Well? I don’t bite. At least, not unless I’m invited to.’

Rose, calm, efficient, always-in-control Rose, was beginning to feel very addled. Of course, she ought to graciously thank him for inviting her to his private function, politely turn down his offer to step inside, which had the vaguely dangerous undertones of what the spider had said to the fly, and hunt down Lily pronto.

She found herself obeying him, however, and shutting the door behind her, although once she had done so her legs refused to cooperate by propelling her towards the chair that he was now indicating.

‘Sit.’

‘I…I’m really on my way out, actually.’ Vocal cords found. Thank heavens! ‘I came outside to get a breath of fresh air and saw…well, the light under the door. What on earth are you doing?’ This was much better. Her brain was beginning to function. She made it to the chair and sat down.

‘What does it look like I’m doing?’

‘Isn’t it a bit rude for the host to be working at his own party?’

‘I think everyone can manage fine without me for half an hour.’ Nick shrugged and continued to look at her, his expression unreadable. She looked awkward in her dress, as if wearing dresses was not something that came naturally to her but having found herself cornered into buying one, she had opted for the least flattering. Every single woman at the party had made a very special effort to wear something that would make them stand out in the crowd. Rose, on the other hand, had worn something that shrieked background. Briefly, Nick wondered what she would look like underneath the shapeless black garment and drew his breath in sharply, surprised at the thought.

‘Besides, there was no choice. I had an urgent phone call from Australia requesting some information to be emailed to them.’

‘Do you ever stop working?’

‘Occasionally.’ He lowered his eyes. Something about the shape of her breasts, just discernible under the dress, was kick-starting his imagination. ‘Lily seems to be enjoying herself.’

‘Yes. Yes, she does.’

‘But I guess you probably found the whole thing a little…boring…’

She shrugged. ‘Not at all,’ she told him politely.

‘You looked bored every time I saw you.’

‘You were watching me?’

Nick didn’t like the intonation in her voice when she said that. ‘It’s my duty to make sure that my guests are having a good time.’

‘Then I’m surprised your keen sense of duty allowed you to sneak off to this office and work.’ Yet again, she had the nagging, unpleasant suspicion that she was a charity case. ‘Anyway, it was very interesting. It always is, meeting people from different walks of life.’

‘Now why do I get the feeling that you don’t really mean that?’ When she didn’t answer, he added, interested against his will, ‘What’s your walk of life?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘What do you do for a living?’

‘I…I work in computers.’ God, that sounded dull, especially when she considered the flamboyant, beautiful people who cluttered his life. How on earth, as a businessman, was he so well connected with the media set? she wondered. Then the question was answered virtually before it was posed. He dated cover girls. Money and looks would always be attracted to money and looks.

‘That’s very interesting.’

‘There’s no need to patronise me.’

‘I’m not. What exactly do you do? In computers?’

‘Nothing very exciting.’

At this point, Nick knew that he should just give up. Getting anything out of this woman was about as rewarding and straightforward as pulling teeth, and if it was one thing he didn’t do, it was to work at making small talk with a woman. But her awkward response was like an invitation to press harder. In front of him, the screensaver came up on the computer and he switched it off.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Look—’ Rose looked at him steadily ‘—I know you probably feel sorry for me…’

‘Why should I feel sorry for you?’

‘Because I don’t slot into your category of an interesting woman.’

‘As you quite rightly pointed out, it’s always an eye opener meeting people from different walks of life.’

‘Well, if you really want to know, I pretty much do everything with computers. Programming, updating systems, designing websites…’ She heard herself rattling off a curriculum vitae that sounded deadly dull. ‘It’s actually very absorbing,’ she stressed.

‘I’m sure it is,’ Nick agreed. ‘Odd that you and your sister should have ended up in such completely different worlds. Computing and acting…’

Rose shrugged and stood up. ‘I’ve got to go and find Lily. It’s late. Time to head back.’

Nick met his fair share of clever, career-oriented women in his working life. He had frequently sat opposite top female lawyers in the early hours of the morning closing deals. Several of them had even tried to flirt with him, but he had never been interested in developing a relationship with any of them outside the boardroom. Put simply, nothing could compete with the archetypal brainless bimbo when it came to relaxation. Who needed to be mentally challenged twenty four seven? He had derived enough mental challenges in his working life.

Or so he had always maintained.

Right now, he was beginning to feel inordinately curious about what the computer whiz kid did in her spare time.

‘Is this a late night for you?’ he asked blandly.

Rose was suitably riled by the question. ‘Not particularly,’ she lied. ‘But there’s a limit to how long I can carry on chatting to people I don’t know about things I’m not particularly interested in.’

‘What would you rather be doing?’

‘Going to bed, as a matter of fact.’

‘With anyone in particular?’

Rose’s mouth dropped open at the sheer audacity of the question, which had sprung from nothing but, once voiced, seemed to fill the room with thick, electric tension.

‘I really don’t think that’s any of your business,’ she finally managed to stutter, red-faced. She turned and began walking towards the door, head held high. He might be a millionaire many times over, but that didn’t give him the right to say whatever he wanted to say and ask whatever he wanted to ask, without reserve.

She was aware of him behind her before she had even reached the door and when he stood in front of her, blocking her exit, she had to clench her hands at her sides to steady her nerves.

‘I like things that aren’t my business,’ Nick murmured lazily. ‘So tell me what you do in your spare time. When you go out until the early hours of the morning.’

He towered over her and she felt as if she were suffocating. Was he laughing at her? She rather imagined that he was because he certainly wasn’t interested in anything she had to say. He was bored with his own party and had decided to have a little fun at her expense. She was sure of it.

Having worked all that out, it still left her with the little problem of how to get out of the room when he was standing in front of the door like a prison warden with a taste for sadism.

The man was loathsome. Yes, he was sinfully good-looking and, yes, she could see those flashes of charm that turned women into mindless robots ready to do whatever he asked them to do, but to her he was someone who was happy to play with other people, in much the same way as a cat played with a mouse. No serious harm intended, just a spot of good fun.

‘I don’t have to do anything,’ Rose told him coolly. ‘Lily’s always been the clubber.’

‘And you’ve always been…what?’ Hand it to her, he thought, she wasn’t going to let herself be daunted by him, even though her mounting colour signalled her discomfort. Nor was she flattered by his interest. In fact, he would have been hard-pressed to think of any woman less flattered by his undivided attention. That in itself was an interesting concept.

‘I talk when I go out with my friends,’ Rose said quietly. ‘And I don’t need to drink to excess or have loud music blaring in the background to feel as though I’m having a good time.’

Nick could hear the implicit sarcasm in her voice and was amused by it.

‘Sounds like fun.’

‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

‘And what do you do afterwards?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When you’ve had fun setting the world to rights?’

‘I don’t set the world to rights.’ Rose gritted her teeth together and reminded herself that he was just goading her and that the last thing she should do was play into his hands by reacting. ‘And even if we did sit around setting the world to rights, it would still be a heck of a lot more fun than slowly getting drunk and bitching about everyone and everything.’

‘Referring to anyone in particular?’

‘Several in general,’ she said waspishly, ‘and they’re all out there. I believe they’re called your friends.’

If she had hoped to insult him, then she had been mistaken, because instead of being suitably offended he just burst out laughing.

When he laughed, really laughed…

Rose’s skin prickled and she felt jumpy and weak at the same time, as if her bones were turning into hot liquid, no longer able to support her body.

‘I’m glad you find that funny,’ she said, and wondered if he, too, could detect the high-pitched panic in her voice. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she badly needed to leave the room.

‘Oh, I do…but you still haven’t answered my question.’

‘I didn’t realise you’d asked one.’ She gave a deep, exaggerated sigh, which she hoped would convey to him just how fed up she was with their conversation.

‘About what you do after you finish discussing deep and meaningful things with your friends. In quiet rooms. Over some invigorating glasses of mineral water.’ Nick grinned. In actual fact, he had headed to the office to have a break from the noise of the party, which was an event he had arranged solely for Lily’s benefit. What an altruist he was turning out to be.

Work was always an absorbing diversion, but right now he couldn’t care less about work because he was thoroughly enjoying himself. He was also more curious than ever to find out just a little bit more about the woman in front of him who was, right at this moment, barely managing to restrain herself from hitting him as hard as she could. He imagined that she could probably throw a pretty good punch. None of the usual female face-slapping before bursting into tears. More a sock to the jaw and then, when he was rubbing his face, another for good measure.

‘I don’t know what you’re going on about and I think you should head back before they send out a search party.’

‘Hardly likely considering most of them are far too inebriated to have even missed me, and what I’m going on about is whether, when your crazy late nights are over, you head back to your place for wild sex…do you?’

‘I told you—that’s none of your business.’ Now she really needed to get out because something was happening and, while she didn’t quite know what, she did know that it was…dangerous for her. And thankfully he stepped aside. He even opened the door for her, but before she could make a break to the safety of the crowded club he was leaning down to her; she could feel the warmth of his breath against her ear and it made her shiver.

‘I take it that means no?’

She wanted to run but she didn’t. She walked away, head held high, without bothering to dignify his smirking remark with an answer.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN Rose looked at the screen of her computer terminal she had the strangest sensation. Instead of seeing her programme run, she saw a face. His face. It was infuriating. Not only had the man got under her skin at the party nearly a week ago, but he was continuing to get under her skin when she should be concentrating on her work. She couldn’t figure it out because she had pointedly avoided mentioning him to Lily and out of sight should have meant out of mind.

Just as well her office wasn’t the sort of cosy little place where people might notice that she had been staring at the same code for the past fifteen minutes. In fact, the big pull about Fedco, when she had joined it five years previously, had been its size. Squatting like a giant patriarch on a retail site just outside London, it had been easily accessible by car, thereby enabling Rose to avoid the vagaries of the London transport system, and, once inside, she had been able to lose herself in the enormity of the building. Her friends all joked about leaving it behind, moving on to somewhere small, chic, designer and innovative where they could really exploit their talents, but in truth the thought of being at the cutting edge of technology in some small, upwardly mobile company terrified her. Small and cutting edge, in her head, spelt insecurity, whereas Fedco was as secure as they came, never mind that you were more a number than a face.

And where else could she sit scowling without someone telling her to get on with her work?

In between her scowls, she kept a sharp eye on the clock. She had never been one to clock-watch but she couldn’t wait to leave the building and get back home, where she could put her feet up and drag her thoughts away from her sister’s high-handed, arrogant boyfriend by watching a couple of hours of mindless television.

With fifteen minutes to go and just as she was finally beginning to get into her stride, an excited Maggie flew to her desk and announced, sotto voce, that there was a man waiting in Reception for her.

‘What man?’ Rose asked suspiciously, using the interruption as an excuse to switch off her computer and begin gathering her belongings.

‘A dishy one.’

‘I don’t know any dish…Hang on, what exactly does he look like?’ She could feel the colour crawling into her face.

‘Oh, you know, tall and dark and drop dead gorgeous.’

‘What the heck is he doing here?’

‘He who?’ Maggie looked as if swooning would become a real possibility within the next few minutes.

‘He my sister’s boyfriend.’ Rose slammed some files into her briefcase and banged it shut. ‘He the most arrogant man on the face of the earth…he the person with the manners of a wild boar…that he…’

‘Oh. Trust Lily to snap up another good one.’ Maggie visibly wilted. ‘Must be tough having a sister it’s impossible to compete with…not that I meant…not that I mean…’

‘I know what you meant, Mags, and you’re right—on the looks front she’s a hard act to follow…and she’s nice with it…’ Rose stood up, stuck on her coat and felt her stomach clench at the prospect of seeing Nick. ‘Although I’ve got to say that this is the sort of man that no woman in her right mind would dream of competing for. One of those “love ’em and leave ’em” types of guys who see women as notches on their bedpost, the more the merrier.’ The office was beginning to thin out as everybody began the exodus, off to enjoy the beginning of their weekend. ‘I mean—’ she leaned towards Maggie who gave a little yelp and stepped back ‘—the man is everything a woman should steer clear of—’

‘Thanks for the endorsement.’

Nick’s voice was so close to her that for a few seconds Rose didn’t believe that she had actually heard him. He was standing right behind them. She turned around slowly and hoped that she was more composed than she felt. At any rate more composed than Maggie, who had launched into an awkward introduction followed by some stuttering apologies about having to dash, simultaneously backing away from Nick’s unsmiling figure. Rose longed to do the same.

‘What do you think you’re doing here?’ Attack, she decided, was the best form of defence. ‘Is Lily with you?’

‘No. Should she be?’

‘Why are you here? Sneaking around?’ He had obviously come straight from work and he looked amazing, unfairly sexy considering he had probably spent his day at a desk somewhere. Wherever it was that very rich people spent their days. At the end of a tiring working day, she always seemed to look like something the cat dragged in. Rumpled hair that had spent the day progressively rebelling against clips and elastic bands, lip gloss that had disappeared some time between her morning snack and lunch-time baguette, face that was shiny under the fluorescent lighting.

‘We need to…have a chat about your sister…’

‘Why?’ Panic slammed into her. From experience, whenever someone had said to her that they needed to have a little chat, the little chat had never heralded good news. When she was growing up, Tony and Flora had always preceded their next, big, new adventure with a little chat. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Shall we take this conversation somewhere else?’ He would return to those insults of hers later. For the moment, he would see to it that they leave the bustling confines of her office. He didn’t have to glance around to know that he was attracting some very curious stares and, while this didn’t bother him in the slightest, he suspected it would give her ample ammunition to attack him for disrupting her life.

He wondered what he was doing here. In fact, he wondered how his highly ordered existence had become so embroiled, in such a short space of time, with two sisters whom he had not known from Adam a month ago. The one, yes, he could understand. Lily was beautiful, sweet-natured and helping her had been a balm for him after the annoyance of his last relationship.

But her sister?

‘No. I don’t want to go with you anywhere. Whatever you have to say can be said right here.’ Drugs? Debt? Pregnancy? Lord, what if Lily was pregnant with his child and too embarrassed to break the news herself? Rose tried to remember just how long Nick had been on the scene.

‘Come on.’

‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’

‘Right. In that case, I’ll just stroll out and leave you to stew in your own stubborn stupidity, shall I? You would rather make a point than listen to anything I have to say.’

‘That’s not true. It’s just that I…can’t leave yet. I still have heaps of work to do.’

‘Wearing your coat? With your computer switched off?’

Rose flushed and looked away. The more she argued with the man, the more she sensed a lively interest from the dwindling number of her colleagues still around. ‘Why didn’t Lily come herself? Is she in trouble?’

‘She…just seemed reluctant to tell you…this herself so I volunteered to do it on her behalf…Now, let’s get out of here.’

It only took them five minutes to make it out of the building, but it could have been five hours. Why would Lily be reluctant to talk to her? They had always talked about everything. At least until this man had come along.

She shot him a look of pure resentment.

‘You’ll have to put up with my driving, I’m afraid.’

‘My driver’s waiting. We’ll use him. I can deliver you back to your car later.’

Rose opened her mouth to protest and realised that he was waiting for the predictable objection.

‘Okay.’

‘Okay? Does that mean that you’re not going to launch into a feminist rant about being able to drive yourself?’

‘I never launch into feminist rants,’ Rose said hotly. ‘I just stand up for the things I believe in.’

‘You shoot your mouth off.’

‘I do not shoot my mouth off and I resent being told that I do.’

‘And I don’t much like the fact that you’re gossiping about me behind my back. I’m obviously on your mind if you feel so strongly about me.’

‘You are not on my mind!’ They had reached his car, how she had no idea because she had been so wrapped up in defending herself.

Nick pulled open the passenger door for her and she slid primly inside, making sure, he noted, to wrap her coat very tightly around her, as if depending on it for protection.

It was out of keeping for him to ever leave work at the ridiculous hour of four forty-five, but he wasn’t regretting his decision. Apart from the fact that he was doing Lily a favour, he was also enjoying himself with her sister. His palate, after years of getting precisely what and whom he wanted, was jaded. Rose, with her bristling, yapping aggression, was a novelty and who was he to resist the allure of the new?

He had also been curious to see the people she worked with, not that that had been possible given the size of the place.

‘Where can we go?’

‘At five-thirty?’

‘Maybe we should just head back to your house. It’s close enough.’

‘No!’ Overreacting again. And also forgetting about the little chat because she had been so wrapped up bickering. All fodder for his oversized ego. ‘There’s a brasserie about half an hour away. Joe’s Brasserie. On Fields Road. I guess there’s as good a place as any.’ She turned away and stared out of the window, acutely conscious of his muscular thigh way too close to hers for comfort. Just being alone with the man in this confined space made her feel guilty. He belonged to Lily and to Lily’s world. She shouldn’t even recognise his physical attributes, although she gratefully accepted that she was human, after all, and, anyway, she disliked him intensely so what did it matter?

‘You’re tense. Why? Does it make you nervous sitting in this car with me?’

‘Why should it?’ Rose turned to look at him and blinked away the disconcerting impact his shadowed, angled face had on her. ‘I’m tense because I don’t know what you’re going to tell me but I have a feeling that I won’t like it.’

‘In that case, take your mind off the possibilities and tell me about your job. I didn’t expect you to work for such a large organisation.’

Rose shrugged. She didn’t want to talk about herself or her job, but she couldn’t see a way around it. ‘I like it there. The size doesn’t bother me. Anyway, don’t tell me that your offices are sweet and small and cosy.’

Nick laughed under his breath. ‘Better designed.’

‘How?’ Rose asked grudgingly, interested to find out how a big clump of concrete and glass could be designed into something less soulless than Fedco.

‘Clever use of partitions and copious amounts of plants.’

‘Right. And you did that yourself?’

‘I approved it at every stage, yes. Does that jar with your picture of me striding through offices, whipping the employees and making sure that they’re chained to their desks until I tell them that it’s time to leave?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact it does.’

Nick laughed louder and gave her a brief, appreciative glance. When he sifted through his extensive repertoire of women, he couldn’t think of a single one who had ever made him laugh.

‘In that case, accept my apologies. Is this the place you were talking about?’

Rose nodded, pleased to see that it was already beginning to get busy. Brasseries in London never seemed to be quiet, and that suited her because she didn’t want that weird, discomforting feeling she got when she was alone with him. And that laugh had done something in her, made her feel oddly hot and uncomfortable.

‘So,’ she said without preamble as soon as they were seated at the circular chrome table and a waitress had taken their order. Orange juice for her and a lager for him. ‘What is it that you wanted to tell me about Lily?’

‘You’re very good at cutting to the chase,’ Nick commented drily. ‘How much has she told you about…our relationship?’

‘We don’t discuss you.’

‘Strange, considering you seem to discuss me freely with everyone else.’

Rose went pink but held his gaze. ‘I don’t think she would appreciate some of the things I might have to say and I can’t put her in a position where she feels that she’s having to take sides.’

‘How big-minded of you.’ Did the woman have no social graces? he wondered.

‘I know you’ve been meeting up,’ Rose ploughed on, ‘but I don’t know how serious it is. Are you telling me that it’s…serious?’

‘Oh, very serious indeed.’ Nick sat back and took one long sip of lager, enjoying its coldness. ‘I think it’s now your cue to warn me off because I’m such a big, bad wolf.’

‘Lily could have told me this herself.’

‘Maybe she’s scared of making a stand for herself because you’ve never allowed her to.’

‘Is that what she told you?’

‘I’m reading between the lines.’

‘Then don’t bother. You don’t know anything about us.’

‘I don’t need case notes to see what’s in front of my nose. You’ve always made the rules and Lily has always obeyed them.’

‘If she’s pregnant, then I expect you to do the honourable thing and marry her.’

For the first time in his life, Nick found himself lost for something to say and Rose watched his stunned expression without saying a word, waiting for him to be the first to break the silence. He had an annoying habit of throwing her into a tizzy and making her gabble like someone who couldn’t operate the brake pedals on their mouth, but she could tell from his face that she had thrown him into a hole and she wasn’t about to help fish him out.

This was the thing she feared the most—that Lily would do something stupid like fall for the man, hook, line and sinker. She hadn’t seen her sister actually being even more stupid and getting herself pregnant, but if she had then Rose would be there, as she always had been, to lend the helping, guiding hand.

‘You think that…’ Nick shook his head incredulously. ‘Shooting your mouth off again. Do you ever think before you speak?’

‘What am I supposed to think?’ Rose demanded, unfazed by his attack. ‘You accost me at work—’

‘I was doing you a favour.’

‘You accost me at work, where, incidentally, you have no right to be, and insinuate that there’s something you have to tell me that’s so awful that my own sister just can’t tell me herself.’

‘And you think that pregnancy is the most awful thing that could happen to a woman.’

‘No, of course I don’t. When two people love each other and have a stable relationship, then pregnancy is the most beautiful thing that could happen, but in Lily’s case…’ She glared at him because he had started staring at her as though she had begun speaking in tongues.

‘You surprise me. I never thought you would have subscribed to the Happy Ever After fairy tale.’

‘What I subscribe to or don’t subscribe to is beyond the point,’ Rose snapped. ‘The fact is this—if Lily is pregnant—’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. She’s not pregnant.’ Nick leaned towards her, resting both his elbows on the table, and Rose fought not to pull back because the sheer force of his personality was so overwhelming. ‘Let’s get one thing straight here, Rose. I’m not a complete fool. I’m no shrinking violet when it comes to the opposite sex, but I make sure to always, but always, use protection. Believe me, the very last thing I would ever want would be to find myself cornered into marriage by a scheming woman who gets herself pregnant so that she can manoeuvre her way into my bank account.’

‘That is the most cynical thing I’ve ever heard in my life!’

Nick looked at Rose furiously. Respect was something he had commanded from other people for all of his adult life. Respect and admiration were the two things he had commanded from women. This one, white faced and disapproving, not only lacked both, but was actually sitting in judgement on him. Him! Nick Papaeliou, a man whose ability to instil fear was legendary.

He was finding it difficult to believe his ears.

‘You can’t be a very happy, well-adjusted human being if you think that the only reason a woman would want to go out with you would be because of your bank balance.’

‘No. I am not sitting here listening to this.’

‘And to imagine that a woman would be conniving enough to get herself pregnant just because she wanted your money…’

At long last his formidable self-control began once again gathering pace, solidifying into icy steel. ‘Do you live in the real world at all, Rose? Or are you the archetypal computer nerd everyone reads about? The one who can do amazing things with software but hasn’t got a clue when it comes to real life? Because you must be wildly naïve to think that money isn’t the thing that makes the world go round. I have met more gold-diggers in my life than you have had hot dinners.’

‘In which case I feel very sorry for you.’

‘I think I need another drink.’ He summoned across a waitress, keeping his eyes fixed on Rose. ‘Lily isn’t pregnant. That’s all you need to know.’

‘That’s a relief,’ Rose said sincerely, thinking it prudent not to tack on that his take on women in general left a whole lot to be desired. Yes, as she calmed down, she could see that he had a point, that women might find his wealth a pretty powerful aphrodisiac. Although, a little voice inside her acknowledged, he must know that with his looks he could be as poor as a church mouse and still have the female population lusting after him. ‘And I apologise if I…went off on a bit of a tangent just then…’

‘A bit of a tangent?’

‘You were saying some pretty emotive things.’

Nick wondered how he had suddenly been cast as the villain of the piece when all he had done was to be perfectly truthful with her. He should have remembered that he wasn’t dealing with a normal, twenty-first-century woman.

‘Apology accepted,’ he grated.

‘So why don’t you tell me why…what you wanted to discuss with me…?’

‘I’m very fond of your sister,’ Nick began, ‘but before you jump in both feet first, let me just add that she and I are not having a relationship. At least, not in the sense in which you probably expect that we are.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Do I have to spell it out for you?’ He impatiently tugged off his tie and undid the top two buttons of his shirt. Was it his imagination or was this place sweltering? ‘Lily and I are not having sex. We have never had sex. It has not been that kind of a relationship between us…’ Since that made a first for him, he was inordinately proud of the fact that he was managing to sustain a great, platonic relationship with a beautiful woman. Not only that, but he felt no stirrings of attraction whatsoever. It had occurred to him that his relationships had become more problematic as the years had progressed. Women had invariably wanted more than he could offer and was it really worth the hassle?

‘What kind of relationship is it, then?’ Rose asked.

‘She’s a sweet kid. I know a lot of people in the industry and I’ve been helping her.’

‘Helping her do what?’

‘Helping her with her career.’

‘You mean putting her in touch with…’ With whom? Actors? Producers? Directors? Rose knew precious little about what went on behind the scenes in the world of acting. It was so far removed from the prosaic life she led.

‘With people who could help her.’

‘That’s…very nice of you.’ Frankly, she was slightly bewildered. ‘Is that why you wanted to see me? Why couldn’t Lily have just told me all that herself? Instead of being so secretive about…everything?’

‘Have you ever heard of Damien Hicks?’

‘Should I have?’

‘Just answer the question, Rose.’

‘No.’

‘Well, he’s an up-and-coming film producer.’

A sense of humour inserted itself in between her bemusement as to where Nick was going with this conversation. ‘Not many of those roaming around in my line of work. Do they have any distinguishing features I might identify them by?’

‘They’re fond of cigars,’ Nick answered drily. He paused. ‘I met Damien when one of my companies was doing an advertising shoot in the Maldives. Not really Damien’s thing now, but five years ago he was just beginning to make his mark. He did the campaign for me and I helped him finance his first film. Just a short feature, but since then his rise has been meteoric. He likes working with new talent.’

‘And Lily is new talent.’ Rose smiled. ‘She should have been jumping at the opportunity to tell me, after all the disappointments she’s been through.’

‘His new film needs a lead, Rose. Don’t get me wrong, he’s auditioned countless young hopefuls and has come to the conclusion that Lily is the one through no doing of mine. I introduced them, got him to give her a chance and she’s done the rest.’

‘Why do I get the feeling that there’s a but lurking just around the corner?’

‘But,’ he said quietly, ‘and this is why Lily was having a hard time discussing this with you…the part will be shot exclusively in America and there’s more than a fifty-per-cent chance that, once she gets over there, she’ll find herself caught up in the Hollywood industry. It’s bigger, there are more opportunities and with a CV that starts with a Hicks movie…’

Rose knew that the colour was draining away from her face.

‘I know this is probably unexpected and not particularly pleasant…’

‘And Lily wants to go to America to live?’

‘She wants to give it a go, see what happens.’

‘Right.’

‘She also wants to go with your blessing.’

‘Right.’ Rose barely had any memories of a life without her sister. They had always been there for one another and she had never given much thought to the day when they would go their different ways. That had been a bridge waiting to be crossed and she had never considered how she would cross it when it did finally loom on the horizon. ‘Of course she has my blessing. I…I only want what’s best for her and if there’s a chance that she could make her dreams come true out there, well…who am I to stand in her way?’ The words were right but the hollowness inside made her feel sick.

‘Come on. Let’s get out of here.’

‘Yes.’ She stood up and took a deep breath. ‘But there’s no need for you to come. You’ve done what you came to do and you can leave me now. I’m capable of taking care of myself.’

‘Try looking in the mirror and then telling yourself that.’

Rose turned away and fumbled for her bag. She couldn’t help but think that this was all his fault even though she knew that the chance he had given Lily was the greatest favour he could have granted. Was she so selfish that she would rather have Lily stay at home than take flight and find her dreams somewhere else?

But when she thought of her sister living across the Atlantic, she wanted to burst into tears.

She made a few feeble protests about wanting him to go, but she didn’t put up much of a fight when she found herself back in his car being driven to her house.

‘Go and sit. I’ll get you something to drink.’

‘I’m not thirsty.’ Rose finally surfaced from her thoughts and tried to shoot him her widest smile. ‘And look…’ She pointed at her smile. ‘Doesn’t this prove that I’m just fine?’

‘Lily will be back shortly. Do you want her to see you freaked out like this?’

‘I am not freaked out.’ She glared at him through the smile. It was so hard to do both and in the middle of trying she felt her lower lip wobble and she knew what was coming. Not even closing her eyes could squeeze back the tears, and then she felt his arms go around her and, worse, felt herself comforted by his strength as he enveloped her.

Nick felt her melt against him and drew her as tightly to him as he could. He had never had the benefit of siblings and, yes, he had known, just as Lily had known, that Rose would be upset, but up close he was staggered by the power of her affection for her sister. He could actually feel her tears soaking into his shirt and she was sobbing, but quietly, as if ashamed at making so much noise.

He felt in his trouser pocket and located a clean handkerchief, which he pressed against her cheek, and that seemed to staunch some of her tears although when she drew back he very nearly wanted to pull her against him again.

His only experiences with weeping women had been at the end of a relationship and their tears had irritated him. What did one say to a woman at a time like this?

‘I’ll make sure you get the hankie back.’ Rose spared him the dilemma of finding the right words. She gave him a watery smile and he did the only thing he could think of doing. He wiped a stray tear from her face with his finger, which made her remember who he was and she stepped back a little further.

‘Thank you for the lift back.’ Rose gathered herself sufficiently to look him in the eye. She could see the sympathy there and felt a complete and utter fool because she knew what he must be thinking: that the loser of a sister was so thrown by the thought of being on her own that she had broken down and blubbed like a baby. ‘I’m glad that I’ve got that out of my system and, honestly, I really am happy for Lily and hope that she gets everything she deserves.’

‘I’m going to pour you something strong. Or would you prefer tea?’ He couldn’t remember the last time he had made a cup of tea.

‘I would prefer you to leave, actually.’

‘No.’

‘No?’ Some of her old fire returned and Nick felt quietly satisfied, although he still knew that he was going to stay with her. At least until she was back to her full vitriolic self, trying to shoot him down in flames. He was fast discovering a masochistic streak in him he had never known existed.

‘Go sit…’ He waved in the direction of the lounge. ‘I’ll be five minutes.’

Less, in actual fact, as he decided to dispense with the tea-making and pour her a stiff drink instead. Much better for the nerves, he told himself.

‘It was just the shock of what you said,’ Rose greeted him defensively, half standing as he handed her the drink. ‘What’s this?’

‘An old family remedy for stressed nerves.’

She sniffed the glass. ‘Called?’

‘Vodka and a touch of whatever juice I happened to find in the fridge.’ He sat on the sofa by her and watched as she took a tentative mouthful. ‘Lily is actually contemplating turning down Damien’s offer if you find it too upsetting having her leave,’ Nick said quietly.

‘That would be mad.’ Rose looked at him and sipped a little more. ‘I can’t believe that you’ve been on the scene less than a month and our lives are being turned upside down.’

‘I wondered when you would get around to blaming me,’ Nick said coolly.

Rose, remembering how she had felt holding onto him and sobbing, cast him a baleful look. ‘I wasn’t blaming you. I was just making a passing remark.’ She had felt weak and helpless and protected and vulnerable, all things she had thought she had left behind when their parents had died and Tony and Flora had taken them in. For that alone, she felt resentful.

‘Ever thought that sometimes life is richer when you step out of your comfort zone?’

‘No,’ Rose said bluntly. ‘There was quite a bit of stepping out of comfort zones when I was young and I don’t remember any of it making my life feel any richer.’

‘Your aunt and uncle…’

‘Wandering the highways and byways. You try facing changes every six months and then tell me how great it is stepping out of comfort zones.’

‘But Lily may have something of the adventurer in her…’

Rose heard the affection in his voice and, yes, she could see why he felt protective towards her sister. Most people did. She had gentle, girlish, winning ways. For the first time in her life she felt a stab of pure, uncharitable jealousy, which made her draw her breath in sharply.

‘Yes, you’re right, she does,’ Rose said coolly. ‘And I don’t.’ Which made her a bore in his eyes because the women who peopled his life, the women he was drawn to, weren’t boring worker bees like her, they were the bright, sparkly, adventurous fireflies that flitted from light to light. ‘Now—’ she stood up ‘—I really would rather you weren’t here when Lily gets home. I want to have a talk with her in private and you needn’t worry that I’m going to do anything that might make her change her mind. I’m happy for her.’

Nick reluctantly rose to his feet. He had glimpsed through a little window of vulnerability and, strangely for him, because vulnerability wasn’t a character trait he found attractive in a woman, he wanted to see a bit more, but Rose was already walking towards the door, just the pinkness round her eyes to account for her crying jag.

‘I don’t expect I’ll be seeing much of you again,’ she told him politely as he slipped on his coat and felt in the pockets, out of habit, for the keys to his apartment.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because I imagine Lily will leave sooner rather than later. You didn’t specify a time, but I guess cutting edge movie producers don’t sit around tapping their feet waiting for their plots to go cold.’

‘No, I guess they don’t.’

‘So I may not get a chance to tell you that I’d rather you don’t breathe a word to Lily about my…my…’

‘Crying? Breaking down?’

‘My little loss of self-control.’ Rose stuck her chin up and met his eyes without blinking.

She was positively shuffling him towards the front door and she pulled it wide open before he could do the sensible thing and lean against it. Because suddenly and inexplicably, he didn’t want to go. Not just yet. But there was no choice.

‘I won’t tell her. You have my word.’

Rose nodded and, without saying a word, she quietly closed the door in his face.

CHAPTER FOUR

COMPOSING emails to Lily was becoming a combination of subtlety and creative fiction.

After Lily had been abroad for three weeks, it had become clear to Rose that life in the fast lane was suiting her sister. She waxed lyrical about the movie she was making, devoted pages to telling her all about the fabulously talented Damien Hicks and the groovy, exciting people she was working with. The flat she was sharing with four other girls, all newcomers like herself, was cheap but apparently called a condo and had a swimming pool. The adjective amazing had become a staple word in her vocabulary. Everything was amazing from the movie to the people to life in general, and Rose was relieved and pleased that it was all working out for her sister.

Which, unfortunately, didn’t solve the financial problems that seemed to have been saving themselves for the minute Lily waved her fond goodbye to British soil.

The bathroom had sprung a leak, which, as the plumber had ominously told Rose, revealed all the makings of a dated system that could be patched up but would really need to be replaced at some point. Rose had opted for the patching-up job. Then the washing machine had collapsed, which had meant a new one. And now, sitting in the kitchen, she could see a damp patch on the ceiling, which didn’t augur well for the dated plumbing system or, for that matter, her rapidly depleting savings account.

Rose groaned. She wondered how she could phrase the words ‘need money’ so that her sister didn’t go into spasms of guilt and worry. Lily had already apologised for not being able to send any over, but she would just as soon as she could. At the moment, she was being paid enough to cover her rent and build a lifestyle that befitted an up-and-coming Hollywood actress, which left precious little for the crumbling house she had left behind.

Rose didn’t begrudge her a minute of the enjoyment she was having. Lily deserved it. But her single income was being tested to its limits and it was getting harder to keep writing her all ‘fine here’ emails when the roof was falling down.

Literally.

One week later, with the damp patch still making small inroads even though the bath was out of commission, she sat at her kitchen table to the sounds of plumbers banging upstairs and the horrible prospect of going to check on them so that she could find her floorboards up and her cool magnolia walls covered with dust. They had been at it for the past two days, putting in a new, updated system. She had not dared enquire as to the cost but the sight of the shiny new copper pipes had made her blood run cold.

Lily was, according to her email yesterday, heading off for two weeks to Arizona where some of the movie was being filmed. Rose knew that she had tried to de-glamorise the whole thing, but it wasn’t hard to read between the lines that she was bubbling over with excitement.

While I sit here, she thought glumly, like Chicken Little waiting for the sky to fall down. Everything else seemed to be.

The sound of the doorbell managed, just, to penetrate the sounds of the banging and Rose vaguely wondered what life had in store for her next. A kindly neighbour coming to tell her that her car had been vandalised? Maybe they had noticed a spot of terminal subsidence on an outside wall?

She pulled open the door, dressed in her very best dungarees, bedroom slippers and old jumper because dust and fine clothing just didn’t go hand in hand, and there he was. The man she had avoided mentioning in all the emails she had sent her sister, the man who kept popping into her head at all the wrong times, even though she had robustly told herself that she was well rid of him.

Her response to him, lounging indolently against the door frame, finger poised as if about to summon her again, was immediate and powerful. Her stomach constricted and her eyes widened, swiftly and unconsciously taking in his lean, muscular frame and those killer sea-green eyes that seemed to burn holes through her. She had to make a mental effort to gather herself together.

‘Hullo.’ Pause. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Still getting to the point, I see. What’s going on?’

‘What do you mean?’ She followed his curious glance behind her and shrugged. ‘Oh. The noise. Just a bit…of repair work.’

‘Are you going to invite me in?’

‘Has Lily told you to get in touch with me?’ She had been careful not to mention a word about her financial problems, but who knew? Maybe her sister had picked up on something and, innocent that she was, might have mentioned to Nick, Nick with the heart of gold who had done so much for her, that perhaps he could just pop his head round the door and make sure that Rose was okay.

Rose instantly felt like a charity case and gripped the door knob a little harder.

‘I was in the area.’

‘Really? I wouldn’t have thought that this would be the sort of area you would just happen to be passing through.’

‘Stop arguing, Rose, and open the door.’ Getting fed up with her non-argument, he pushed the door and strode in, not leaving her the option of slamming it in his face.

Nick, for the first time in years practising celibacy, was aware of the shameful truth, which was that he had been thinking on and off about her for the past few weeks. His life had been as busy and hectic as ever, his work taking him abroad, as it always did, on a regular basis, but every so often he had caught himself conjuring up her face and wondering what she was up to.

Gentle prodding had eventually elicited from Lily something he could respond to. Rose, Lily had told him in all confidence, had not sounded herself when they had last spoken on the phone. She had said all the right things, that everything was fine, but she had sounded anxious.

Nick had reacted like a man who suddenly discovered the site of an itch and realised that he could reach to scratch it. Sitting on his leather swivel chair, feet carelessly propped up on his gleaming, mahogany desk, he had immediately and piously promised to look in on her.

‘You wouldn’t want to have filming ruined because you’re worried about what’s going on over here,’ he had soothed. His prospect of a weekend of solid work, interrupted only by a stuffy Saturday night do, which he had reluctantly agreed to purely for diplomatic reasons, suddenly brightened considerably.

He wasn’t entirely sure why he could be bothered to hunt down a woman who rubbed him up the wrong way, but when it came to members of the opposite sex he rarely questioned his responses, safe in the knowledge that his gut feelings had rarely, if ever, let him down. Granted his gut feelings were usually wrapped up in the normal, testosterone-driven desires for a sexual relationship, but the fact that Rose was out of the ordinary in that respect didn’t put him off. She had been on his mind, for whatever reason, and the fastest way to solve that problem would be to hunt her down. And Lily was a very handy go-between, giving him an excuse he might not otherwise have had.

‘What the hell is that banging all about?’

‘I told you. Repair work. Minor.’ Rose bristled at the sight of those fabulous eyes sweeping along the banister, up to where a fine shimmer of dust obscured the small upstairs corridor. She wondered what her sister had said to him. God, what if she had begged Nick to check up on her? Lily would have thought nothing of asking such a favour because, in her eyes, Nick wasn’t a shark but some innocuous little minnow, someone who would be happy to do her a small favour. In Lily’s world, everyone was potentially sweet and good because she herself was.

Rose determined that as soon as her sister returned to England, she would personally teach her the ways of the world. Lily might have oodles more experience when it came to men, but her insight into human nature was sadly lacking.

‘Doesn’t sound minor.’

‘You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here. If Lily put you up to this, then there’s no need to be concerned.’

‘Even though your house is falling down?’

‘My house is not falling down!’

Nick had forgotten how easily the woman bristled. He had also forgotten how amusing he found the trait. It made a refreshing change from his normal interaction with women, which went along all the usual courses that inevitably led to bed. Bed and all its attendant complications, which he was determined to avoid, at least for a while.

‘Why don’t you get me a cup of coffee and tell me all about it? You look stressed.’

Rose gaped. Of course she was stressed. An army of plumbers was currently bankrupting her and now, on top of that, the last man on earth she wanted to see had waltzed through her front door, brimming over with tea and sympathy because her dear, well-intentioned and hopelessly misguided sister had asked him to. Who wouldn’t be stressed?

And on top of that, she was now embarrassingly aware of her clothes, which advertised someone who was in serious danger of imminent arrest by the fashion police.

While he, she noticed sourly, fashionably dressing down in faded jeans and a rugby sweater, still managed to look fantastic.

‘I’m more stressed now that you’ve shown up,’ Rose told him and Nick immediately jumped on the slip-up.

‘So you’re admitting you’re stressed out. Lily did say you didn’t sound your normal self when she spoke to you on the phone.’

Rose mentally strangled her sister. ‘Hence you were coerced into rushing over here just to make sure I wasn’t about to jump off the nearest bridge.’

‘That’s taking it too far.’ There was an almighty thump from the direction of the dust and Rose groaned, waiting for Andy’s voice to summon her up, probably to confront yet another unexpected problem. Like a routine trip to the dentist, which turned out to reveal a nightmare of hidden problems, her house was beginning to revel in showing its age. A little crack there, a small spot of damp here and suddenly it was as if it had given up the fight and was now determined to fall down around her ears. And as she mounted the stairs she could already see from the grim look on Andy’s face that more bad news was on the way.

‘Sorry, Rose.’

Behind her she was aware that Nick had followed in her hurried wake and she could sense his attention moving up a gear.

‘We’ve discovered something a little unfortunate…’

Rose was too afraid to ask, so she stared at him in mute silence while he shook his head and gave her a look of such profound sympathy that she feared the worst.

‘Asbestos.’

Rose saw the very last of her savings flutter through the window and she balled her hand into a fist and clenched it under her chin. ‘How can that be?’

‘Lodged under the floorboards,’ Andy said kindly. ‘Nothing to look at, but I can spot it a mile away. It’s not everywhere but for the moment we’re going to have to put everything back in place until it’s sorted. We’re not trained to remove it.’

‘I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me that you’re joking.’

‘Wish I could, love.’

‘And I guess you don’t know how much it’ll cost to have it removed?’

He shrugged while behind him his guys were efficiently putting the floorboards back down. ‘Best not lose sleep over that one, considering you’ve got no option…’

Rose saw them out and was too despondent to care whether Nick was hovering in the background with his uninvited sympathy. She didn’t even care that he had been dispatched to check on her as if she were incapable of looking after herself without Lily around.

‘So—’ she turned to face him, slamming the front door shut on her plumbing messengers of bad tidings ‘—there you go. House collapsing. Money disappearing. Stress levels high. In other words lots to report back to Lily, although I’m hoping you’ll dredge up sufficient compassion to know that I would rather she enjoyed all the opportunities opening up for her in America without having to worry about what’s happening to me back here.’

‘How long has this place been falling down?’

Rose shrugged. ‘Weeks. It’s been saving itself for Lily’s departure.’ She sighed, too tired and depressed to argue at his presence in the house, allowing him to witness her plight. She found that he was leading the way to the kitchen, manoeuvring around the cupboards until there was a mug of sweet tea in front of her, and she gratefully swallowed a mouthful.

‘And you never breathed a word to her because you didn’t want her to worry.’

‘There was no point. She would have rushed back over here and that would have been the end of her career, everything she has worked so hard for.’

‘So you decided to shoulder the stress on your own.’ He had shoved back his stool so that he could stretch out his long legs and was looking at her thoughtfully. ‘Except now you’re left facing bills you can’t afford.’

‘I’ll just have to put in a bit more overtime,’ Rose snapped, railing against any suggestion of pity.

‘Quite a bit more,’ Nick commented drily, raising his eyes to the ceiling and the source of her misfortune. Frankly he had zero firsthand experience of a woman who had to work literally to keep the roof over her head.

‘Yes, well, it’s not impossible.’ She stared at him sourly and with inspired accuracy continued, in a tight voice, ‘I guess this is a completely different world to the one you’re used to, where problems get fixed with the snap of your fingers. I don’t suppose you know too many women who face a struggle to pay unexpected bills and can’t afford the little luxuries you would take for granted.’

‘Attacking me isn’t going to solve your financial crisis.’

Rose didn’t care for the word crisis. It was a little too evocative for comfort. ‘You have to go. I need to phone my bank manager.’

‘On a Saturday?’

‘I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before. Of course, I can call my bank manager and take out a loan.’

‘Which will have to be repaid.’

‘But at least I’ll be able to afford the repair work,’ Rose pointed out wearily. ‘And if you’re going to sit there and state the obvious then you can finish that cup of tea and go.’

‘And in the meantime, where do you intend to live?’

‘Here, of course.’

‘Dust everywhere? Hidden dangers under the floorboards? And what about when you get the men in to clear the asbestos? What then? Hang around in a mask?’

Rose felt tears of frustration and anger prick the backs of her eyes. ‘Oh, just leave me alone.’

‘So you can wallow in self-pity?’

‘I do not wallow in self-pity,’ she flung back at him through gritted teeth, shaken out of her despondency by the force of rage. ‘I’ve got my solution and as soon as the banks open on Monday, I’ll be there.’

‘You can’t live here.’

‘Oh, you’re right,’ she sniped with dripping sarcasm. ‘I’ll just get my butler to book me in at the Savoy until everything’s sorted out.’

Nick stifled a grin. ‘Better idea. You need money and I have it.’ ‘Forget it, Nick. You might do favours for my sister, but I don’t need anything from you.’ She gave him a mutinous look, which he chose to ignore.

Was there any woman as stubborn as this one? He felt a sudden desire to be the one who controlled the reins and melted the fortresses she had erected everywhere around herself.

‘You’re letting your emotions talk and emotions never solved anything. If you run to the bank for a loan, you’ll spend the next few years paying it back along with the crippling interest accrued.’

‘So instead I take the money from you? And in return you get what?’

A vivid image of her lying naked in his bed presented itself and he blinked it away.

‘You can’t hide a problem of this magnitude from your sister. You might want to protect her from everything harsh that life can throw at her, but she deserves to know the truth about what’s happening over here. Give her enough credit not to be a complete fool and come hurtling back to England when she knows that it wouldn’t solve anything. If she finds out that you’ve been keeping this from her, she’ll feel betrayed.’

‘Don’t pretend you know my sister better than I do,’ Rose retorted, but his words set up a chain of thoughts that began to gnaw away at her composure. She had always been the one looking out for Lily, but where did concern end and smothering begin?

Uncertainty shadowed her face and Nick, spotting it, jumped in. ‘I’m not pretending anything, but you have to tell her. Course she’d want to fly over, make sure you were okay, but she might not if…’

‘If what?’

‘If she knew that I was looking out for you.’ Since when had he ever looked out for any woman? The rules of his game had always been simple. No dependency, no strings attached. Rose ignited some other feeling in him. She didn’t conform to his ideas of physical feminine beauty so, whatever weird stirrings he had occasionally felt in her presence, he was certain it wasn’t lust. But whatever it was, it was certainly novel and to his jaded palate the thought of something new was strangely alluring.

‘Oh, please.’

‘I am trying to help you out here,’ Nick told her irritably. ‘Why can’t you just accept it?’

‘I don’t see you as the kind of guy who helps damsels in distress,’ Rose pointed out, omitting to mention the fine print, which was unless they looked like Lily or unless he wanted something from them. ‘You think you ought to offer assistance because you feel guilty. By some weird coincidence, you happen to show up when all this…’ she gestured vaguely around her ‘…is going on and you think you ought to do something because you have a relationship with Lily. You feel sorry for the plain, ungainly sister left behind trying to cope.’

‘I’m not suggesting I hand over the money and walk away. You seem to forget I’m a businessman.’

‘Well, what are you offering, then? Not that there’s any chance I’m going to take you up on your offer.’

‘Because you’re a stubborn fool.’

‘Because I don’t like the thought of being indebted to anyone.’

‘Except the bank.’

‘That’s different.’ Rose flushed, feeling boxed in by his clever use of words.

Novelty value was fast turning into challenge and it was invigorating. ‘Take a couple of months off work…’

‘Take a couple of months off work?’ Was the man a complete lunatic? ‘Have you been listening to a word I’ve been saying?’ She shook her head in disgust and snatched up the mugs, carrying them off to the sink. Nick swivelled round so that he was looking at her and, while he was staring, she spun around and leant against the kitchen sink, arms folded. ‘You know what’s happening here, the financial strain I’m suddenly under, and your breezy solution is for me to have time off work? That activity that pays the bills?’

‘How much do they pay you a month?’

Rose went pink. Wasn’t discussing of salary the final taboo? Not that this man would skirt round a taboo if his life depended on it.

‘Well? No need to be shy.’

‘What I earn is none of your concern.’ She should have asked for a pay rise months ago. She was damned good at her job and worked a lot longer hours than all of her colleagues. If only she had had a crystal ball foretelling her huge household bills were on the horizon she might have been more assertive during her appraisal. She reluctantly told him, knowing that he would just carry on sitting there until she did. He didn’t laugh, as she had expected him to. Instead he looked at her for a few seconds, as though weighing up something in his head.

‘I’m branching out,’ he told her, ‘going into the leisure business. Corporate investment and the money markets pay the bills but I’ve conquered that challenge. Now, I’m investing some of my own reserves in building up a boutique hotel portfolio.’

Rose thought of the reserves she was investing in—making sure she didn’t wake up with the ceiling on her pillow.

‘What’s a boutique hotel?’

‘Something very small and exquisite and strictly for people who don’t want to be surrounded by hundreds of people every time they step out of their bedroom.’

‘Don’t tell me…strictly for the very rich because privacy costs.’

‘Of course. Like I said, I’m a businessman. I’m starting with one in Borneo.’

‘Borneo,’ she echoed sceptically.

‘Trust me…the next must-go-to destination. It’ll be small, eco friendly and built to the highest standards. And here’s where you come in…’ Nick paused. ‘You spend the next two months running the show. You set up the computer system for all the accounting et cetera, you liaise with the architects—’

‘I don’t know the first thing about…hotels. I can’t even think when the last time I stayed in one was.’

‘Which I’ll make sure to put right,’ Nick murmured. ‘Think about it, Rose. You won’t be able to live here while work’s being done…I’m offering to relieve you of the stress of living out of an overnight bag on a friend’s floor. I’ll put you up in three separate hotels in London over the next two months so that you can have firsthand experience of what makes a good one work, and in addition I’ll pay you double what you would have been earning. In return, you can try your hand at something other than sitting in front of a terminal all day long.’

Nick, who donated vast sums to charity on an annual basis, had only ever had nodding acquaintance with altruism on a personal level and he was finding that it felt good to be at the giving end of largesse. In truth, he could increase her salary multiple times and not notice the difference to his bank balance, but he was shrewd enough to know that there was a thin line between a reasonable proposition and a contemptuous act of charity for which he would probably find his hand roundly bitten off.

Because this woman snapped and snarled and yapped and bit and he was looking forward to taming her. He decided to look on it as his pet project. All work and no play…well, he knew the saying well enough and, as he wasn’t playing at the moment, he would devote all of his formidable attention to digging underneath that prickly exterior to the woman inside. And doing her a good turn in the bargain by fishing her out of a pretty nasty hole.

‘Don’t you have people who could do the job for you?’

‘Don’t you have any ability to just say thank you and go away to count your blessings?’

‘Why do I get the feeling that there’s an ulterior motive to your offer?’ Rose asked. She felt driven to find holes in his proposal even though the rational side of her was already calculating the benefits of what he was offering. She had worked long enough for the company to know that they would not have a problem in giving her unpaid leave while she sorted out her domestic situation and the thought of something different was appealing. Stepping out of her comfort zone was appealing. Appealing and frightening at the same time.

‘Because you’re inherently suspicious.’ Nick shrugged and stood up. ‘If you’re not interested, then I’ll leave you to get on with the messy business of sorting your house out with the help of your friendly bank manager.’

‘Wait!’

She raced behind him as he headed for the front door, glancing sideways as she did so, where the shimmer of dust in the air reminded her of the generosity of his offer.

‘What if I fail? I have no experience…’

‘Have faith in yourself. You won’t fail. I take it that that’s a yes?’

‘I shall have to clear it with my boss.’

‘And if you do take up this opportunity…’ Nick lazily appraised her, from her worn bedroom slippers to the shapeless dungarees, which, he now thought, should only ever be worn by labourers on a building site ‘…you’ll have to do something about your wardrobe.’

Rose went bright red. It occurred to her that actually working with the man might just prove to be more stressful than sorting out her situation without his help.

‘I don’t go to work in these clothes,’ she said coolly. ‘I put them on because anything else would have been stupid.’ Lily would have managed to look fabulous in faded, old clothes but she had to stop comparing herself to Lily. ‘If you don’t think that I’m decorative enough to work with you, then you might as well tell me now because I don’t intend to buy a brand-new wardrobe for a two-month stint. And also…’ she drew herself up and stared him straight in the eyes ‘…if I do happen to work for you, then I don’t want you to think that I’m doing it because I actually like you.’

‘Very tactful.’

‘I’m just being honest.’

‘And, believe me, I find that very refreshing, especially in a woman.’ He was so accustomed to women using their bodies and their wiles to get what they wanted that the metaphorical bucket of water Rose kept tipping over him was doing him no end of good. He even contemplated the possibility of taking a little time out to show her the ropes.

‘There might be some travel involved,’ he continued. ‘Do you have a passport?’

Rose nodded as the parameters broadened around her.

‘And because you’ll be working for me directly, I will set you up with an office inside my place.’

‘Whoa. Stop right there. I don’t think that’s a good idea at all.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because…because it would be a lot more professional for me to…ah…work in an office environment.’ She envisaged somewhere imbued with his masculine scent, with the open door to his bedroom within throwing distance. She shied away from the image with an inward yelp of dismay.

‘You’ll be there on your own,’ Nick said, amused at her discomfiture. ‘And, face it, this is my private project. I can hardly bring you into the office, sit you down and not expect you to become an object of curiosity.’

‘Well, you could explain…’

‘Dangerous curiosity…’ Nick expanded silkily, waiting in telling silence as her eyes widened. ‘People would naturally assume that because I had brought you in to work on my personal project, we were an item.’

‘An item?’

‘Involved with one another. Going out. Lovers. Now, I don’t much give a damn what other people think of me, but I don’t bring my private life to work.’

‘But you…we…we don’t have a private life,’ Rose protested, going bright red.

‘Immaterial. Tongues will wag and I can’t have my power diminished. Does that answer your objection?’

‘Of course, I can see your point of view, but…you have to see mine as well…’

‘And that is…?’ He leaned against the door and stuck his hands into his pockets.

‘Well…’ Rose tried to think of a coherent argument that wouldn’t make her sound prissy in the process. How could she explain that just standing next to him in her own house made her feel nervous and uncomfortable, so how much more difficult was it going to be when she was working in his?

‘Your virtue is perfectly safe with me.’ Nick grinned. ‘Like I said, I won’t be there during the day, and if you’re scared of being around me in my apartment, then we can always catch up on neutral territory. There’s a pub just around the corner. We can avoid the cubby-holes with the subdued lighting.’

‘Of course I’m not scared of you.’

‘Good, because there’s no reason to be, nor is there any reason to feel uncomfortable in my presence.’

Mortified, Rose interpreted his slow, amused smile as his way of telling her that he wouldn’t come near her if she happened to be the last woman on the face of the earth.

‘I’ll let you know after I’ve spoken to my boss. Tomorrow some time. Is that all right?’ What was she letting herself in for?

One month into her new temporary job, she was fast finding out.

A chic five-star hotel tucked away in the bowels of Covent Garden was her first project for inspection. Her brief was to examine why it worked and in detail, with a weekly report to be compiled for Nick’s scrutiny. That, in addition to checking out costs for everything under the sun that might possibly be needed in the construction of a hotel. There seemed to be a hundred people, all of whom she had to liaise with, and Nick, at the end of each day, expected perfect recall and written reports on everything.

He would sweep into his apartment at six-thirty and, although he had told her that she could clear off by five and email him with her findings, she had pretty quickly sussed that, whatever he said, he expected her to work until at least six-thirty and if necessary later.

And she didn’t mind. She had thought, a lifetime ago it seemed, that she would be crammed into his small personal space and, like a cat on a hot tin roof, would spend every minute there in nervous expectation of his sudden entry. She had envisaged being surrounded by his private objects, which would intrude on her, a constant nagging and stomach-churning reminder of his overwhelming personality.

But his apartment, for starters, was vast. It was also peculiarly impersonal. The abstract paintings on the white walls gave no clue to the man except to indicate his wealth. There were no photos in frames or ornaments standing on shelves. Two cleaners came promptly at eight every morning, and departed at ten, leaving the apartment spotless. Her office was no makeshift affair. It was large and kitted out for serious work and, once there, Rose had no trouble concentrating.

And then, just as she was usually packing up to leave, he would sweep in. From the office, Rose would hear the slam of the front door and the jangle of keys as he carelessly tossed them on the granite kitchen counter. Then he would appear in the doorway, tugging at his tie, leaning against the doorframe and watching her for a few seconds in silence as she logged off the computer.

It was the time of day she had been dreading. Yet now, it was the time of day Rose waited for with a sense of heady, forbidden, crawling expectation.

Tonight was no exception and she felt her stomach churn with excitement as she heard him approach. She knew it was wrong but her attraction to him was something she just couldn’t seem to stuff away somewhere conveniently out of reach. It had ambushed her from behind and her only defence against it was to hang onto her veneer of professional self-control.

‘I’ve got those costings for you.’ She had trained her eyes not to stare whenever he tugged his tie off, but, like recalcitrant kids, they still always managed to sneak a look at that glimpse of hard brown chest that was revealed as he undid the top two buttons of his shirt.

‘And I’ve got something for you…’ He walked towards her, waggling a piece of paper in his hand.

‘What is it?’

‘Have a look.’ He gave her the envelope and leant on the computer terminal, watching as she slit it open. ‘We’re going on a trip.’ He smiled slowly as she tipped her face up to stare at him. ‘A little look-see at some prime land in Borneo.’ He moved round so that he was behind her chair and then he bent towards her. Rose could feel his warm breath against her neck. ‘Fish out the summer glad rags, Rose. It’s going to be mighty hot out there…’

CHAPTER FIVE

NICK told Rose everything there was to know about the timetable for his project and what had inspired him to pick Borneo for its location. Over a bottle of wine and some delivery Chinese food, which they ate in his ultra-modern, rarely used kitchen, he explained his connections with Malaysia, starting with an old university friend with whom the project was to be undertaken, and ending with an impassioned and persuasive belief that Borneo would soon be the rising star as Kuala Lumpur and Penang became overrun with tourists.

Rose did her utmost to play down her excitement and treat the whole thing as something that happened practically every day. She asked cool, sensible questions but her mind was running rampant with thoughts of planes and sea and lush green forests and, of course, being sequestered somewhere remote with him.

That was the most frightening aspect of the whole thing. How on earth was she going to maintain her sang-froid when she would be with him twenty-four seven? How long before her professional mask slipped and she made a complete fool of herself? Thus far, Nick had no idea that she followed him with her eyes, drinking in the powerful lines of his body, feasting on his harsh beauty, filing away throwaway remarks, the way he laughed, the slashing gestures he used when he was in a bad mood, so that she could bring them out at a later date and savour them like a guilty secret.

To him, she was the ugly duckling he had rescued out of obligation who, she hoped, was proving herself to be as efficient an employee as he could have asked for. Occasionally he teased her and very occasionally some of that teasing bordered on flirtation, but Rose, having lived her life in the shadow of her stunning sister, was a realist. Charming, good-looking men liked charming, good-looking women. A beautiful woman, for a man like Nick Papaeliou, was an essential accessory and if he occasionally flirted with his plain employee, then it was simply an overspill from his unconscious ability to charm. She shuddered to think how he would react if he ever found out about her inappropriately lustful imaginings.

She would be brought back down to earth by Nick listing her duties once they arrived at their destination.

Rose, who had been anxiously day-dreaming her way into a fictitious and awkward scenario in which he was roaring with laughter as he spotted her following him with puppy eyes as he dived into an imaginary swimming pool, surfaced to find him frowning.

‘You are going to be able to accompany me, aren’t you, Rose? You did say when I took you on that you had a valid passport.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Rose answered brightly.

‘Because you seemed to be a million miles away just then.’ He leaned towards her, eyes narrowed, and Rose automatically flinched back. ‘Is there something you should tell me?’ he demanded unsmilingly and for a few, disturbing seconds Rose thought that he had read her mind and exposed her shameful little secret.

‘S-something I should tell you?’ she stammered weakly.

‘Fear of flying, maybe?’ Nick leaned back and looked at her thoughtfully. ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I know you haven’t done much overseas travel…’

‘Too busy touring the UK in search of spiritual zen,’ Rose said, weak with relief.

‘Right. But there’s no need to be afraid of flying. Believe it or not, there’s more chance of you ending up under the wheels of a car than plummeting from the sky.’

‘Oh. Well, thank you very much for reassuring me that those great metal birds can stay airborne,’ she said sarcastically, recovering her equilibrium.

‘Then what’s the problem?’

‘I…don’t have a problem, Nick.’ She would have to take a swimsuit; she sure as hell wasn’t going to take a bikini. She would take a very sensible one-piece and sneak out under cover of night to have a swim. The thought of frolicking in a pool with him made her feel sick.

‘There you go again.’

‘There I go again what?’

‘Frowning and getting that distant look in your eyes.’ He reached forward and before she was aware of his intention he smoothed her brow with his thumb. It was such an unexpected gesture that Rose literally jumped and gave a little yelp of shock.

‘You’re on edge. Why? If you’re not scared of flying, then is it the unknown?’

‘Yes.’ She wanted to rub where he had touched and brush away the scorched sensation she was feeling. ‘I’m scared of the unknown.’

‘Thought so,’ Nick said with satisfaction, ‘although I can’t understand why. You had a pretty nomadic existence growing up. If anything, I would have thought you would have found the unknown quite appealing. Don’t we always long to revisit our childhood?’

Rose had done her best to discourage any personal conversation between them. She felt safer when their relationship was purely on a business footing. Yes, of course he asked about the house and the work being done on it and naturally she answered him because the house was, really and truly, the reason why she now found herself working for him. But beyond that, she was vague when he asked her what plans she had for the weekend, or how she spent her evenings or even what sort of people she met in the hotel, whether she liked them or not.

However, she was so relieved that he had misunderstood her apprehensive expression that she gratefully clung onto his fear-of-the-unknown nonsense for dear life.

‘Sometimes it doesn’t work that way,’ Rose said distantly. She stood up and began clearing away the empty containers, which looked a little unhealthy as the leftover contents began to congeal.

‘No?’ Nick pulled a chair towards him and propped his feet up on the black leather. After weeks of working with her, sitting within touching range of her when they brainstormed over some niggling problem, brushing her arm with his as he leaned to consult architectural drawings, growing strangely accustomed to seeing her now when he came in through the front door, he could honestly say that he still didn’t know much about her personal life. She had piqued his curiosity a long time ago but, instead of proximity doing what it should have done, and diminishing it, he was more curious about her than ever before.

Now she was throwing him a glimpse into her thoughts and, like a dog tossed a bone, he was annoyed to find himself picking it up and preparing to run with it.

‘You mean you’re scared of what you don’t know even though you spent your formative years dealing with it?’

Rose shrugged. She had her back to him, which suited her. It helped her keep her voice steady as she spoke. ‘You should be doing this, Nick. This is your house and these are your dishes.’

‘But you’re a woman and I’m a man. Don’t women love doing things like that? Keeps them busy and happy.’

Rose spun around, but her heated accusation of sexism died on her lips when she saw the grin plastered across his face. Without thinking she flung the tea towel at him and he caught it and tut-tutted under his breath.

‘I should punish you for that,’ he drawled. ‘Trying to cause grievous bodily harm to your employer…’

Rose felt her mouth go dry. This was the lazy, flirty voice he sometimes pulled out of the bag, with the dexterity of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and, it didn’t seem to matter how many times she told herself that he was just one of those born charmers, that voice still got to her every time.

‘With a tea cloth?’ she said lightly. ‘You must be a lot more delicate than you look if a tea cloth can inflict serious injury.’ A brief, electric silence greeted this remark and Rose clenched her hands into fists behind her back. She didn’t know what had possessed her to say that.

‘Should I take it as a compliment that you consider me big and strong?’ Nick murmured provocatively. He could tell that she would have liked the ground to open and swallow her up and for the first time since she had started working for him, he felt suddenly enraged. Enraged that he had given this woman an opportunity many would have killed for. Enraged that she continued to treat him with the studied politeness of a stranger. Enraged that every single time he had tried to get under that armour of hers, he had found himself gently but firmly repelled. Enraged now that she was back to looking at him with something like horror, as usual turning a perfectly innocent, teasing remark into something diabolical.

‘Forget I said that.’ Nick’s voice was cool and dismissive. He even turned away.

Rose was stricken. How was he supposed to know that she shrank away from him because she was just so damn scared that if she didn’t her treacherous legs would have her pelting towards him and her even more treacherous arms would wind themselves around his neck and cling?

What must he think of her? That she was ungrateful? Churlish? Buttoned up? The sort of woman who had suffered a sense-of-humour bypass somewhere along the line?

Rose wondered whether maybe she had.

‘I’m sorry,’ she faltered.

‘What about?’ Nick enquired politely.

‘I’m really excited about going to Borneo…’ Humourless. Buttoned up. An efficient little worker bee who actually thought that what she had to say mattered to Nick Papaeliou. He was courteous, even teasing and flirtatious sometimes, and yet here she was, lips tightly pursed, as if her maidenly honour were under threat. Clutching her precious, uninteresting private life as if one single lapse would send him into a sexual, predatory frenzy. The idea was so nonsensical that Rose inwardly cringed.

‘But I guess I’m a little scared as well…’

‘Oh, yes?’ Nick reluctantly felt himself drawn to that simple, hesitant admission. ‘Why?’

Rose sighed and went to sit at the kitchen table. She rested her chin thoughtfully in the palm of her hand and stared back down the years. She had agreed with him, initially, because he had conveniently supplied her with an excuse for her own disturbing train of thoughts, but now she thought that maybe he was right. Maybe she was scared of the unknown.

‘Tony and Flora always thought that traipsing around the country would make me brave and adventurous. I think they kind of figured that some of their let’s-change-the-goalposts lifestyle would rub off on me, but it never did. When you move from school to school, you end up dreading each upheaval even more than the last one. At least, that’s what it did for me. It’s why I like working for Fedco.’

‘You can hide behind the size?’ he guessed shrewdly, now fully ensnared by her dreamy, distant voice.

‘I can be safe. Borneo…’ Rose laughed and blinked so that he was back in her line of vision. ‘Well, Borneo is just something else altogether.’

‘All that heat…’

‘And insects…’

Anything could happen. He nearly said it out loud and caught himself in the nick of time. ‘But Tony and Flora would be pleased…’

Rose gave him a dazzling grin. ‘More than pleased. They’d be overjoyed. You want to hear them on the subject of Lily. They’re thrilled to bits that she’s now on the other side of the world making her fortune. I think they feel that they’ve somehow contributed to that.’

‘And what about you?’

‘I would never contemplate living across the Atlantic.’

‘I mean, are you thrilled that your sister is making her fortune on the other side of the world?’

‘I’ve got accustomed to it,’ Rose told him. ‘I miss her terribly, but it helps knowing that she’s happy and fulfilled.’

‘And are you?’

‘Am I what?’

‘Happy and fulfilled.’ Nick wasn’t quite sure why he had asked the question. He could only think that he must be out of practice when it came to women, because experience had taught him that questions like that provoked answers he didn’t like.

‘Well, I’m pretty pleased with how the house is coming along.’ Rose scuttled back into her shell. ‘Have I told you that I’m going to have it redecorated top to bottom? The whole place is destroyed and, rather than do a patch up job, I’m going to go all the way and really have it exactly how I want it.’

‘Interesting. Sounds like you’re there for the long term.’

‘At least for the foreseeable future,’ Rose said vaguely. ‘But tell me a bit more about Borneo…what else do I need to know…?’

That it took for ever to get there. That was something he hadn’t told her and it was just as well as it had allowed her no opportunity to spend three days angsting over the ordeal of sitting next to him on a plane for a seemingly never-ending period of time. Rose had had enough angst on her plate just worrying about what she was going to buy to take with her.

Then there was the whole question of what exactly she was supposed to do once she got there. She might be a whizz at computers and, yes, facts, figures and financial projections were things she could handle without too much difficulty. And reporting back on her hotel, chatting to the manager, with whom she had developed a pleasant rapport, about the nuts and bolts of city chic, was within her spec…but looking at land in a country she had barely heard of and could only vaguely point to on a map?

‘Okay. Spit it out.’

‘What?’

‘There’s something on your mind. Spit it out.’

Nick snapped shut his laptop computer, sat back and gave her his full, undivided attention.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I mean you’ve barely spoken since we took off four hours ago, you’ve been stuck on the same page of your book for the past hour and if you chew your lip any more we’ll have to see if there are any paramedics on the plane. Tell me you’re not worrying about what the hot weather is going to do to your hair.’

‘Hardly. I stopped worrying about what my hair did years ago.’

‘Relax. Enjoy the flight, as our air steward would say.’ He glanced around him and then shot her a lazy, amused smile. ‘Is first class all it’s cracked up to be?’

Rose had had to stop herself from fidgeting with gadgets and demonstrating just how impressionable she was when it came to long-haul travel. ‘And the rest,’ she confessed. ‘And I am very appreciative…well…for this and for…everything else…’

Nick frowned. This wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Gratitude wasn’t what this woman was all about. Stubborn, feisty, mutinous and often highly aggravating, yes. But grateful…no. Over the past three days, Nick had found himself looking forward to this trip. The man who had crossed the Atlantic a million times and more, who had platinum frequent-flyer cards from just about every major airline, who could afford to go anywhere in the world on a whim if he so desired, and in the company of pretty much any woman he wanted…and he had been looking forward to a business trip with a woman who made his teeth snap together in sheer frustration quite a bit of the time.

He had never been one to spend hours soul-searching, but his illogical reaction did make him conclude that his life was full of yes-men, people who would jump if he looked in their direction and silently mouthed the order.

‘I don’t want your thanks and gratitude,’ he grated, and Rose gave him a startled glance.

‘Fine,’ Rose snapped back.

‘So tell me what’s wrong.’

‘I’m not sure I’m up to what I’m supposed to do when we get to Borneo,’ she admitted in a sulky voice. ‘I work with computers. I don’t know the first thing about building sites and conveyancing.’

‘You won’t have to. My Malaysian counterpart is very competent. You won’t be shoved into a position where you have to make technical decisions that are beyond your scope.’

‘So why am I here, in that case?’

Ah. Now, this was back to normal. Rose clambering onto her argumentative bandwagon, although her tone of voice couldn’t have been more polite. He was, he had discovered, beginning to know her.

‘There’s more to a hotel than foundations and planning permission. Let’s just say that you’re here to provide the female touch.’

‘Which is what exactly?’

‘You argue too much.’

‘Only with you.’ Their eyes tangled and Rose looked away hurriedly.

‘I’ll take that as a compliment. It’s nice to know that I can fire you up.’

Rose ground her teeth together and Nick let out a loud laugh that drew stares from the passengers sitting closest to them. ‘Think about the things that impressed you most about the hotel in London, think about how they could be incorporated into a small hotel sitting in the equatorial belt. It’s going to need an almighty leap of the imagination, but you know what I want…’ I want you. The thought weaved a path in his head and he greeted it without surprise. Maybe he had known all along that she was more than just a challenge or a novelty or a refreshing break from the type of women he usually enjoyed. He wanted her. Not just her mind, but her body. Nick lowered his eyes.

Every inch of him gave the impression of a man totally absorbed by what his companion was saying. She certainly seemed to have taken on board everything he had told her in the past about his plans, even things he had mentioned in passing. Now, enthused, she was eagerly discussing them and he made sure to contribute, but the flicker of his eyes was on her mouth, soft and pink, and her breasts, shadowy outlines under her cotton pinstriped shirt as she leant towards him, her hands articulating what she was saying. Something about sunken baths and a rainforest decor that would bring the environment right into the hotel.

‘I did think about buying a guidebook,’ she finished, ‘but I wanted to be assaulted by the place without any preconceived ideas.’

‘Yes. Good idea.’ Nick smiled, setting her at ease. ‘Right…now let’s compare some of those preliminary costings…’

How could she ever have thought that a life devoid of change and adventure was a good one?

Here she was, sitting in the first-class compartment of a plane that would deliver her first to Kuala Lumpur and then onward to Kota Kinabalu, the state capital of Sabah, places she had never heard of in her life before. And, yes, it was exciting.

She looked at Nick surreptitiously from under her lashes and felt that familiar illicit thrill. He was sleeping, his body half inclined away from her so that all she could glimpse was his profile and the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

The seats in first class could be extended to full body length and, although she was as reclined as he was and the cabin was in darkness, she was finding it difficult to sleep.

For the first time, she could sort of understand how Tony and Flora had been affected by wanderlust. The unknown wasn’t scary, as she had imagined. Or rather, she amended to herself, it was scary, but it was also full of possibilities.

The strongest possibility now was that she would remain wide awake for the remainder of the trip and then be fit for nothing when they eventually landed.

But she slept.

And the next few hours so completely removed her from everything that was familiar to her that Rose, delighted and disoriented, put herself firmly in Nick’s care. Connections were made, passports were checked and she just looked around her open-mouthed, until finally they were on the last stage of their travel, quickly covering the two-and-a-half hour trip towards Kota Kinabalu.

Daylight was already fading by the time they were being delivered to their hotel, but it was still very, very hot.

‘It’s…not what I expected…’

‘You can hardly keep your eyes open, Rose. As soon as we get to the hotel, you can climb into your bed and fall asleep. Don’t try and appreciate the scenery now.’

‘But how is it I feel sleepy and you don’t?’

‘I’m an experienced traveller.’ He gave her an amused, mocking glance.

The taxi swung round a corner and there, following a long drive through manicured lawns, was the hotel. As she stepped out of the taxi she was aware of a thousand tiny night sounds.

‘I’m aiming for something more eco-friendly than this,’ Nick murmured into her ear. ‘It’s big but, in terms of comfort, you’ll be hard pressed to better it. Now, I shall get us checked in and then you’re going to go to your room and get some sleep.’

‘I wish I’d read that guidebook after all.’ She yawned ruefully.

‘No need. Lee Peng knows this place like the back of his hand. A living guide is a damn sight better than someone else’s interpretation of a place.’

‘I feel awful leaving you to go to bed…don’t think that I won’t be pulling my weight…perhaps if I just freshen up a bit, I could join you and we could go over plans for tomorrow…’

Nick ignored her valiant protests and checked them in while Rose loitered behind him, savouring the glassy marble flooring and the cool, colonial elegance of the foyer. Were these the perks of working for a rich man? Everything done in style, with no expense spared.

She was shown to her quarters by one of the smiling porters and only when the door closed behind her did she realise how tired she really was.

She closed her eyes on a bedroom that was all ceiling fans and bamboo blinds and soft mosquito nets and rattan furniture, and a bathroom that she would have to devote some time to in the morning as she spied the sunken bath.

And awoke abruptly, it seemed like five minutes later, to the sound of tapping from behind the blinds she had hurriedly pulled down earlier.

When Rose looked at her watch, she saw to her horror that it was already eight-thirty. She had slept for nearly ten hours. And for the first time in weeks her internal alarm system had not woken her up at three in the morning for no better reason than to fill her head with thoughts she didn’t want.

The tapping on the door galvanised her into action. It was probably the cleaning service making her feel like a lazy slob instead of the working woman she was supposed to be. She wasn’t sure what room Nick was in, but she would have to get through to him immediately through the operator and assure him in her crispest voice that she would be ready to start work in fifteen minutes.

No need. Rose pulled up the exquisite bamboo blinds and there he was, standing outside what was, in fact, a glass door that she could now see led to a small wooden patio, along one side of which was a hammock, next to a couple of chairs and a small table, all perfect for relaxing outside and gazing at the scenery. In this case, lush lawns liberally interspersed with coconut trees, which led down to a beach. To the left, she could glimpse the pool, just a slash of bright blue surrounded by turquoise umbrellas and yet more coconut trees in between.

But she took all this in in literally a couple of seconds.

As she had discovered, nothing could compete for her attention when Nick was in the vicinity.

‘It’s you.’ Where was her crisp voice when she needed it? Suddenly conscious of the fact that she was still in just her nightie and the thin bathrobe she had flung on before leaping towards the door in a surge of guilt for having overslept, Rose folded her arms and tried to look composed.

‘Who did you think it was going to be?’

‘The cleaning service. I…I…was actually just about to phone through to you and let you know that I’ll be ready to start work shortly.’

‘No need to phone.’ Nick gave a slight inclination of his head. ‘I’m in the cabin next to yours. In fact, if you go around that flimsy wooden lattice partition, you’ll be at my glass door…’ He had seen her in many guises, from angry to embarrassed to primly correct, but he had never seen her like this, flushed from sleep, her skin satin-smooth, hair tousled.

Nick made no apologies to himself for wanting her. He had recognised that kick of desire and his sole objective now was to sate it. Had she been his full-time employee, he would have done his damnedest to shut the door firmly on all thoughts of seduction, but fortunately she wasn’t.

Rose tried not to look horrified at this piece of information. ‘I’m sure that won’t be necessary. If you want to give me fifteen minutes, Nick, I’ll join you in the foyer.’

‘No need to be so formal.’ He leaned against the frame of the sliding patio door. ‘I’ve ordered breakfast to be brought to my room for both of us. When you’re ready, just skip across. Continental all right for you? Oh, and I thought we might as well appreciate the surroundings today. Enjoy the beach, see what the poolside facilities are…we can start in earnest tomorrow when Lee’s back from KL.’

Several things he had just said converged to send her into a state of mild panic. Sharing breakfast. In his room. Enjoying the facilities.

Rose cleared her throat, wondering how she could pick her way through her objections and emerge on the other side without appearing to overreact, but he was already turning away, only glancing back to give her a nonchalant wave.

She had brought no clothes to cover breakfast with her sexy boss in his room. He had been wearing a pair of khaki Bermuda shorts and a collared tee shirt. In between the confusion of what he had been saying to her, she had managed to notice the elegant, casual ease with which he pulled off an outfit that most men would have looked frightful in.

Rose rummaged through her bags at the speed of light and tried to block out the image of his legs, bronzed and muscular, sprinkled with dark hair.

Was he hairy all over? she wondered feverishly.

Yet another thought to try and dispel as she flung on a baggy tee shirt, all the better to hide her figure, and a pair of trousers that would probably reduce her to a puddle of perspiration by the middle of the day but which would have to do. At least until she gained a little colour and her confidence grew.

She arrived, flustered, to find him sitting on his veranda sipping a cup of coffee, legs stretched out on one of the chairs, leaving her to sit closer to him than she had bargained for.

‘Gorgeous, isn’t it?’ was the first thing he said as she sat down and poured herself some orange juice. She could feel her heart beating madly in her chest.

‘Stunning.’

He slid his eyes over to where she was staring pointedly away from him and across to the pool area. ‘You really shouldn’t wear trousers, Rose. Too hot.’

‘I…I haven’t unpacked as yet. I just grabbed these from the top of the suitcase.’

‘Well, no matter. I suggest we take to the beach after this so you’ll have to change into a swimsuit anyway. We can get whatever beach towels we need from Reception.’ Nick relished the thought of seeing her in a swimsuit. It was hard to get any idea of her shape under the loose-fitting clothes she seemed to favour and he fancied she was more curvy than the magazines currently deemed fashionable.

‘But aren’t we here to…work?’ Rose asked desperately. She crumbled a croissant in half as he did the same and tried to focus nonchalantly on the fact that he would have seen thousands of women in swimsuits. He wouldn’t look twice at her.

‘Lateral thinking.’ Nick demolished one half of his croissant in a single bite and wiped his mouth with his serviette. The breeze was light and warm and very, very inviting. Yes, work was on the agenda, but he had to admit to himself that he felt very relaxed, more relaxed than he had in years.

‘Lateral thinking,’ Rose repeated and he nodded sagely at her.

‘We have a few possible locations to have a look at and we’ll do that tomorrow with Lee, but basically the rest of the time here will be…investigative work…’

‘I thought we had meetings lined up. Don’t we have to go over plans with your architects? What about the buildings inspector?’ She had envisaged days packed with meetings and the gritty business of getting the ball rolling on foreign soil. Of course, they might share the occasional meal together, but on the hop so to speak. And he knew people in the area. Evenings, she had reckoned, he would spend with them, catching up on old times. It was what any normal human being would do.

Investigative work did not fit into her overall picture of their ten days on the island.

‘There’s a hell of a lot to see here. Coffee? Another croissant? Yes, as I was saying, there’s a lot to see.’ He relaxed back and clasped his hands together behind his head. ‘Did you know, for example, that Borneo is the world’s third largest island? That Sabah, the proposed site for my venture, has some of the oldest rainforests in the world? Oh, yes. There’s a lot more to this place than the beach you see down there…and naturally, we have to check it all out so that we can decide where the ideal location would be. Beach or forest? Should we cater for the lazy traveller or the adventurous one? One person may be content to sit in the sun by a pool or stroll down to the beach and while away the day in a deckchair with a constant supply of cocktails on tap. Another may want to trek through the jungle in search of an orang-utan or two. Did you know that over here the orang-utan is known as the “wild man of Borneo”?’

‘We’re going to see orang-utans?’

‘Not until we’ve checked out that pool and, of course, the beach.’ He stood up and stretched, then stuck his hands in his pockets and stared out towards the sea. ‘Fascinating place this…where else can you find rainforests and white beaches sharing the same space? You’ll see for yourself, but all in good time. For now…’ he nodded towards the beach ‘…a lazy day checking out the competition.’

And sitting in front of a lukewarm cup of coffee and a half-eaten croissant was no longer an option. It was a glorious day, the sun was hot and she had absolutely no excuse to wriggle out of a swim in the sea.

Anyway, Nick’s suggestions were often thinly veiled commands. And she was being paid generously by him. Some might well say that being paid to swim in the clear South China Sea was a pretty good deal.

Rose wasn’t precisely thinking along those lines as she flung clothes hurriedly into drawers while deciding which of her three black swimsuits she would wear. She was thinking that there was safety in nursing her attraction under the respectable cloak of their professional relationship. Even if that professional relationship was a little more unorthodox than most. Indeed, the fact that she worked for him in his house probably accounted for her inconvenient attraction. Made sense. After all, she had previously felt exactly the opposite sentiment before she had found herself cooped up under his roof.

She had a brief feeling of triumph, as though she had managed to solve a complex maths problem.

Then she looked at herself in the long standing mirror by the wall. As swimsuits went, this one was modest. But yet there was cleavage to be seen, far too much for her liking, and legs and shoulders and the generous proportions that always made her want to cringe…

And on a beach…with his body on display…not just snatched glimpses of bare chest where the top two buttons of his shirt were undone…where was her protection going to be?

CHAPTER SIX

THE beach was uncrowded. Too early, Rose guessed, for most of the guests. The same large canopied umbrellas that adorned the sides of the pool were in evidence along the beach, dotted here and there, and closer to the glassy, lake-like sea similar-coloured padded deckchairs were interspersed. Further along, she could see that a thin finger of land projected into the sea and from a distance might have passed for a jetty were it not for the coconut trees growing along it.

It was a breathtaking sight. Really a vision of paradise, from the white powdery sand dappled with shadows cast by the overhanging coconut trees, to the still, dazzling azure of the sea.

Rose paused and savoured the scene through the protective lenses of her very dark sunglasses. She had decided to maintain her inclination to conceal her shape by wearing a knee-length, flimsy beach dress and she could already feel the rising sun burning through it.

Along the beach, a couple of the deckchairs were occupied by early risers who were mostly reading and wearing sensible large straw hats.

Typically, Nick was nowhere to be seen and Rose was peering into the distance when she felt a hand on her shoulder and he said, with a thread of amusement in his voice, ‘Why are you wearing a sheet?’

Rose swung around and glared at him from behind her sunglasses. ‘I’m trying to protect myself from the sun,’ she snapped. ‘It’s fine for you. You can tan easily but I’m a lot fairer. In fact, coming out into the sun at this hour is not a very good idea at all for someone of my complexion.’

Which, she admitted to herself, was something of a slight overstatement given it was still quite early in the day.

He, of course, was bare-backed but for the towel swung casually over his shoulders. As promised, he had brought hers with him and he reached out to give it to her, still grinning.

‘You should have brought a sombrero with you…like those practical people further along.’

Rose snatched the towel and began walking away, but slowed down at the notion that he might be sniggering as he watched her wobbly, none-too-toned rear.

She took heart from the comforting thought that this was not a holiday, this was work.

They seemed to be walking away from the scattering of people on the beach and she immediately set that particular situation right by heading towards one of the lounging chairs not far from an elderly lady who was napping with her book over her face.

‘Are you going to remove that garment of yours? Because I warn you—the sun here is very hot. Much hotter than in England.’

‘I’ve brought a notebook. I thought we might start jotting down a few things in connection with work.’ She felt pleasantly secure behind the sunglasses and half watched as he spread his towel on the sand, ignoring the sun lounger, and lay flat on it. As if that weren’t distracting enough, he began to rub sun cream haphazardly over his body.

‘Even I burn,’ he assured her. He could feel her watching him. She did that. Watched him. Nick was used to women watching him, but the concealed way she did it had become a powerful turn-on. He wanted her, but he wasn’t going to get her through outrageous flirting or expensive gifts. He settled back, closed his eyes and waited for the prolonged silence to have the desired effect.

Eventually, Rose spoke, keeping her treacherous eyes away from the tempting sight of his practically naked, bronzed body. ‘What made you decide to go into…well…hotels?’

‘You sound like an interviewer.’

‘It’s only polite curiosity,’ Rose said. ‘Everyone has a reason for doing what they do.’

‘And you went into computing because…?’

‘We’re not discussing me.’ The sun was beginning to make her feel lazy and peaceful. She didn’t want an argument. She wanted to close her eyes and let her chattering thoughts slip away. ‘I bet you don’t even stay in many hotels.’

‘On the contrary. I’m rarely out of them.’

‘I meant for pleasure as opposed to business.’ She glanced down at him and realised that he was barely listening to her. His eyes were closed and she was pretty sure that his thoughts were a million miles away. She carefully inched the flimsy beach robe off and began applying a generous layer of sunblock to her exposed skin, keeping a careful eye on him because lying flat she felt a whole lot more confident about her body than when she was sitting up, where her stomach, smooth as it might be, still seemed to have the last laugh at her for having spent years guiltily avoiding the gym.

Or maybe she was simply comparing herself to Lily who had a washboard abdomen even when she was slouching and breathing out.

Job done, Rose lay back down and shaded her face with the magazine she had brought from her room.

‘Hotels for pleasure…hmm…well, maybe it’s the pull of the challenge, to boldly embark on a project of which I have zero experience. There’s nothing like the possibility of failure to get the adrenaline going.’

She was aware that he had half turned towards her and she kept her eyes firmly shielded behind her magazine.

‘I’ve conquered the money markets,’ Nick said casually. ‘Or rather, I’ve made enough money to live comfortably for the rest of my life, even if I decided never to lift a finger again. Very comfortably. What does a man do when he reaches that position?’

‘Retire and enjoy what life has to offer,’ Rose said, surprised. ‘But then, who would you enjoy it with?’

Nick sat up and lifted the magazine from her face, which immediately brought her shooting up so that they were staring at each other fully.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘That remark just sort of slipped out.’

‘Working with computers, Rose, might not have been the best career move for you.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning you have no tact.’ Nick would have left any other woman in no doubt that overstepping the boundaries was tantamount to a still-born relationship. However there was, he reminded himself, no relationship with this woman and, anyway, she was already bristling. Of course, he wasn’t about to back down and allow a woman, any woman, to invade his private space, but was he really ready for a fight? When the sun was beating down on his back and the sea glimmered invitingly?

‘You mean that sometimes I don’t agree with you.’

‘I’m going for a swim.’ Nick stood up, a profile of one-hundred-per-cent masculine beauty, and glanced back over his shoulder to her. ‘Coming?’

‘I think I’ll just stay here, thanks, and carry on sunbathing,’ Rose flounced back onto her lounger and stuck the magazine back into position.

The notebook that she had packed to remind herself that work was the reason for her lazing on a lounger on a beach remained unopened in her bag. She had a moment of brief despair as she contemplated the remainder of their stay, then she turned her thoughts to his high-handed attitude, telling her she was lacking tact. It felt a lot better to fulminate.

By the time she had worked herself up some healthy self-righteous anger, the sun was beginning its ascent and pleasantly warm was turning into baking hot.

Rose reluctantly shelved her thoughts, sat up and glanced at her watch to discover, with shock, that Nick had now been swimming for over forty minutes, and when she peered towards the horizon, there was no sign of him.

Panic slammed into her and she shot to her feet and hurried down to the water line, shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun. The beach was more crowded now, although still relatively deserted. People were in the water. A quick glance told her that Nick was not among their number.

She obeyed her instinct and forged into the sea, which was so warm that her body barely needed to adjust to the temperature.

The one continuity in her life had been her swimming lessons. Tony and Flora had nurtured a vague, hippie-like notion that swimming was akin to being at one with nature, and, with that in mind, they had insisted on swimming lessons wherever they had happened to be. The Education of Life was more important than the education of the classroom, but swimming was something they had insisted upon. And Rose had enjoyed it so much that she had continued even when classes had no longer been necessary and long after Lily had packed it in because it ruined her hair. Rose, never one to spend time agonising over the state of her hair, had found the silence and privacy of swimming a soothing balm to a tumultuous adolescence.

Feeling the water on her was like coming home.

As she struck out she wondered whether she should have run further up the beach in search of a lifeguard, but the thought of creating a scene, probably for no reason, was off-putting, never mind Nick’s reaction if he returned from a simple swim to find the hotel’s rescue party hot on his trail.

Anyway, it was too late to think about that.

She was pretty sure she would spot him a little further out, and then she could slink back to shore, safe in the knowledge that he was all right.

She swam confidently out but then, when the beach was beginning to look a little too distant for the sake of comfort, she felt the slow crawl of fear through her because who knew what inhabited the waters? They looked crystal-clear and perfectly innocent, but anything could be lurking in the depths. What if he had been sucked under by something? Were box jellyfish rampant in these waters or was she mixing up her oceans?

That thought was enough to convince her that heading back to shore and summoning the search party was the best course of action.

She was hardly aware of the shape quickly gaining on her until she felt something on her waist and she spluttered in sharp, sudden panic to a stop.

‘Were you worried?’ Nick was laughing as he edged back from her.

Relief turned to anger and she glared at him, tempted to hit him smartly on his sexy, grinning face, but her training kicked in. Any kind of tussle in water was a bad idea.

‘I was hot,’ she snarled, turning away and beginning to strike out back for land.

He caught her again, this time by her ankle, and she spun around and began treading water. ‘In case you don’t know,’ she snapped, ‘it’s dangerous to fight in the water.’

‘Who’s fighting?’ He flicked his head in the direction of the promontory she had noticed earlier on. ‘In case you were wondering how come you couldn’t find me…I was on that strip of land. I saw you swimming out and decided to meet you.’

‘Just in case I ran into problems?’

‘Can’t have my employee drowning on my watch, can I?’

‘I happen to be a very strong swimmer.’

‘I noticed.’

Rose wasn’t sure that she liked the thought of him looking at her while she had been swimming.

‘So…joining me? We could always swim back to shore and walk across, but better exercise this way.’

She didn’t think he needed the exercise. Unlike her. But she was enjoying the water and she suddenly wanted to prove just how good a swimmer she was. She nodded and then headed strongly away towards the strip of land, invigorated as he swam up behind her, then alongside and finally in front, easily making it to land before her so that she found herself coming out of the water, dripping wet, with no protective outer layer of baggy clothing, while he sat on the sand and surveyed her at his leisure.

Self-consciousness kicked in along with all the insecurities she had always had about her body, ones which should have been put to bed a long time ago because, really, what did looks matter?

Everything about her was unfashionably big. Her breasts were not the pert, small bumps beloved by fashionistas, her hair was too uncontrollable, her frame was just too short and stocky and she was sure that her rear could have done with several thousand more trips to the local swimming pool.

And there he was. A study in casual male beauty, sitting lazily on the trunk of a fallen coconut tree.

Her modest swimsuit suddenly felt like a handkerchief tied together with a few bits of string and Rose wrapped her arms around her body in a show of feeling cold.

‘I really never thought that this would be part of a working trip over here,’ she said crossly, all too aware that he was sizing her up and finding her wanting in every department.

She had, he noticed, made sure to sit as far away from him as was humanly possible without it looking glaringly obvious. Coy, he thought, not for the first time, was not a word in her vocabulary. Neither were the words flirting or teasing. If she had had her notebook to hand, he was pretty certain that she would have brandished it just to make sure that he got her hands-off message.

Once upon a time, he might have been amused by that because his hands would not have wanted to be on her, but not so now.

Next to her, the women he had dated in the past were stick insects, devoid of personality and sex appeal. He wanted to tell her that instead of huddling next to him, arms wrapped around her body in an attempt to hide the glorious abundance of her body, she should revel in her womanly curves.

However he acknowledged that she would probably hit him if he did that, so he dragged his eyes reluctantly away from her and resigned himself to the prospect of a slow seduction via harmless small talk, not a route he had ever favoured.

‘What do you think of this spot?’

Rose inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. She had been half expecting something sarcastic along the lines of her resemblance to a beached whale. Scenery, she figured, she could expound upon, and she did, asking him a million questions about Borneo. Whenever there appeared to be a pause in the conversation, in she jumped to carry on the subject while the sun continued to rise in the sky. Eventually, Nick turned to her and raised his eyebrows.

‘So, do you think we have exhausted the tourist angle?’

‘I’m interested.’

‘You’re sunburnt.’

‘What?’ Rose automatically raised her hands to her face, allowing Nick a bird’s-eye view of her luscious breasts, which her severely cut swimsuit was having a hard time concealing.

‘Right there.’ He ran his finger quickly along the strip of her nose and Rose pulled back with a little yelp of shock. ‘We need to get you back to our towels and bags.’

‘Oh, no. I’ve only just thought—were they safe being left on the beach?’

‘As houses.’ Nick stood up and held out his hand for her to take.

Flustered, Rose grasped it and he pulled her neatly to her feet, covertly watching her breasts bounce as she gathered her balance. Since when, he wondered, had he become a dirty old man, covertly watching a woman’s body and getting turned on?

‘You never did tell me…’ Rose said as they strolled back towards their possessions, which, as he had predicted, were exactly where they had been left.

‘What?’ Nick enquired, staring straight ahead of him and trying to subdue his overactive imagination.

‘Why you chose to branch out into the hotel business. You said that you no longer felt challenged by making money, but why hotels?’

‘You mean considering I’m a sad and lonely old man still searching for the perfect woman?’

‘I never said you were sad and lonely,’ Rose objected, flushing.

‘Just someone who had no experience of staying in a hotel for fun, an all-work-and-no-play kind of guy…’

‘I’m sure you have lots of fun,’ Rose stumbled, wondering how they had managed to swim out of safe waters into the perilous seas of personal conversation. It wouldn’t bother him, she was certain, but it bothered her.

‘Had,’ Nick amended guilelessly. ‘I haven’t actually been out with a woman since I met your sister…’

For a few seconds Rose felt completely disoriented by that admission. He had told her that his relationship with Lily had been platonic and she had believed him. She hadn’t stopped to wonder whether that had not been of his choosing and, at the thought that he might actually fancy her sister, she felt a sudden coldness in the pit of her stomach.

‘Lily has been known to have that effect on men,’ she said brightly, clearing her throat.

‘What effect is that?’

Rose shrugged. ‘Being worshipped from afar.’

‘Whoever mentioned anything about worshipping her from afar?’ Nick asked incredulously. ‘I meant, my darling, that the night I met your sister happened to be the night I broke up with a woman and ever since then I’ve stayed away from the fair sex. All men need a break from complications.’

Had he just called her ‘my darling’? Well, yes, not as an endearment, but for a few wild seconds her heart soared, then she registered the rest of his sentence and realised that, for whatever reason, he had decided to fill her in on a slice of his private life. He was practising celibacy.

‘They do,’ Rose said approvingly. ‘And it’s a mistake to think that sex is the answer to everything.’

Nick felt a kick of satisfaction that he had manoeuvred the conversation exactly where he wanted it. Sex. Such a small word to cover such a massive subject and, with testosterone coursing through his body, he was in the perfect mood to talk about it.

‘But that’s not why we’re here, is it?’ Rose hastened on. ‘We’re here to do some groundwork for your project. It doesn’t matter why you wanted to go into the hotel business. That’s your private matter and I know you’ll agree that we shouldn’t let chit-chat about our private lives intrude on the reason why we’re here in the first place.’ Rose felt quite proud of the adult manner in which she had grounded their wayward conversation.

One step forward, two steps backward. Nick ground his teeth together in frustration.

‘Would you like me to make a list of the usual tourist sites?’ Her beach dress beckoned like manna from heaven and Rose gratefully snatched it up and slipped it over her head.

‘That won’t be necessary, Rose.’ Interesting, this feeling of having the rug pulled very swiftly out from under your feet. Interesting and not particularly agreeable. ‘I suggest we use the rest of the day to do a bit of sightseeing.’

Rainforests…mountains and waterfalls…rare flora and fauna…the world-famous orang-utan sanctuary…Then a flurry of meetings and, of course, Lee Peng and his family with their abundant hospitality…supper to meet family and friends…

There was hardly time to draw breath and no time at all with Rose. Just that one morning on the beach, which, after nearly five days, seemed like a lifetime ago.

Nick had never met a woman more adroit at standing a mere five feet away from him and yet scrupulously avoiding his company. She was awash with good ideas, all faithfully detailed in her ever-present notebook and all related with an air of earnest professionalism, whenever she happened to find herself alone with him. Nightcaps at the hotel were politely but firmly rejected, with convincing yawns to back up her claims that the heat made her tired. Breakfast was always sent to her room because, and this she had told him with an apologetic smile, she liked to use the time to multitask. Eat and communicate with her friends back home via email.

With increasing frustration, Nick realised that he was gradually being reduced to the level of a schoolboy, unable to stop sneaking looks at her in her tee shirts and shorts and then fantasising about her late at night when he lay in bed staring at the ceiling and telling himself that he was behaving like a lunatic.

He could have anyone and yet when he tried to think of the many women he could have, he found his thoughts blurring and finally there she was, in his head yet again.

And here he was now. Facing another night of frustration because Rose had retired early, this time claiming the perennial headache excuse.

He looked at his watch and discovered that it was after midnight. One fifteen, to be precise, and he considered his options. Remain in bed, scowling into the darkness, or else get up and at least solve one of his problems by having a very cold shower.

He slid out from under the covers and felt the pleasantly cool touch of tiles under his bare feet. Overhead, the fan whirred rhythmically, drowning out the little noises of night creatures outside. The prospect of a cold shower was about as appealing as the thought of switching on his computer and catching up on work, which was usually his routine when he couldn’t sleep.

Nick moved quietly, without bothering to switch the lights on, and stuck on some drawstring cotton trousers, which were the closest thing to pyjama bottoms he possessed.

Making very little noise, he opened the sliding door that led onto his private veranda, from which the landscaped gardens stretched before him as a series of darkened shapes.

Borneo was proving to be a marvel of surprises. Few places, he thought, could provide such a winning combination of white sandy beaches, blue, calm sea and the spectacle that was the wonder of the rainforest.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move. It was just a flicker behind the trellis separating his veranda from his neighbour’s. In this instance, Rose. Normally, the leafy fronds clambering over the wooden trellis acted as a very successful screen, but in the inky blackness of the night whatever she was wearing must have been of a light colour.

Nick felt a rush of adrenaline surge through him. Without pausing to think, just acting with the unerring instincts of the predator, he circled the patch of lawn and appeared in front of her, bare backed because the night was balmy but, other than that, decently clad, if lacking shoes.

‘Well, well, well,’ he drawled, ‘come here often?’ He sprinted up the two wooden steps, not giving her time to beat a hasty retreat.

Whatever she was wearing, it was obvious she had not dressed for an accidental meeting with her boss. Her nightie was ultra thin and barely skirted her thighs. The light trickling from the room behind her was her cruellest enemy because it showed the full, rounded outline of her bare breasts. With a little leap of the imagination, Nick could almost see the shape of her nipples.

Rose looked at him in horror. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing here?’ she demanded, too shocked by his sudden appearance to even think of what she was wearing.

‘Same as you. Couldn’t sleep.’ Ever one to take full advantage of the opportunities presented to him, Nick sat on the chair next to her and grinned. ‘I know why I couldn’t sleep, but what about you?’

Rose was literally lost for words. Never in a million years had she expected this. She could have wept with frustration because she had done so well over the past few days. She had behaved with impeccable and detached politeness and pointedly ignored him whenever she could get away with it, and when she couldn’t she had fallen back on talking about work. Yes, it was an ordeal, but at least the nights were hers. And now…How dared he invade her down time? Behaving for all the world as though he had every right?

‘I think you should go,’ Rose said coldly, rising to her feet. She snatched up the glass of water she had brought outside with her and spun round on her heel.

‘Not so fast.’

Before she knew it, he was standing in front of her, his hand biting into her arm.

‘What are you doing? Let me go.’

‘Tell me why you’re running away from me.’

‘I am not running away from you.’ If only she could sound a bit more convincing, but her voice was a high whisper and, Lord, her legs were like jelly.

‘You mean you’ve suddenly and coincidentally realised that you’re very tired and need to go to bed immediately?’

‘I mean…’ She took a deep breath to steady herself. This situation felt so intimate. Just the two of them, eyes locked, while the rest of the world slept. His semi nudity was an affront to all her senses, filling her up until it seemed to be the only thing she could see even though she was making every effort not to. ‘I mean that this is my private time and I don’t want you in it. I may work for you, Nick, but when I’m in my own quarters I don’t really expect you to barge in as though you own the place.’

‘Hardly barging in. I saw you through the trellis and, as neither of us could sleep, I figured I might as well pop over, make sure you were okay.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You don’t look fine. You’re shaking. Are you cold? You’re wearing next to nothing.’

‘I’m wearing more than you.’

Nick gave her a rueful smile. ‘Apologies, but like you I didn’t expect company at one thirty in the morning. It was either this or nothing.’

Rose gulped.

‘I don’t possess pyjamas.’

‘Everyone possesses pyjamas.’

‘I challenge you to rifle through my belongings.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Let’s go inside. We wouldn’t want the neighbours talking, would we?’ There was no chance of that. The hotel was cleverly designed to ensure that guests had almost total privacy, with only the double cabanas sharing the same veranda split by leafy trellises. Nick took advantage of her momentary lapse in concentration to walk into her rooms, which were identical to his with only variations in some of the decor to differentiate the two.

She was as neat as he had expected her to be. The little sitting area was tidy, unlike his, which always bore the signs of work in progress. She had only switched on the side light by the sofa and he preferred to leave it that way.

Looking at her, he could tell that she was on the verge of imploding and it had obviously hit home that she was in a very transparent item of clothing because her arms were once more protectively around her as she hovered by the door. Wondering, no doubt, what tactic she could employ to chuck him out.

Well, he had waited for days in a state of frustration. He wasn’t going to blow this chance. He wanted her and he knew that all he needed to do was smash through her veneer of polite aloofness and she would be his because she wanted him too. The air between them had sizzled ever since they had arrived on the island. He intended to douse it.

‘It’s mad to be up at this hour.’ Rose laughed nervously, keeping her distance. ‘We’ll be fit for nothing in the morning and we’ve another busy day ahead.’

Nick strolled lazily towards her until he was standing right in front of her. In the muted light, breathtakingly sexy and very, very dangerous. Every alarm bell in her head was clamouring, but there was still a part of her that scoffed at the notion that there might be anything to be afraid of. After all, what was he going to do? A man like that? Kiss her? Men like that, she knew, made passes at girls like her sister. They didn’t look at her twice and if her heart was beating like a hammer, it was simply because she was scared of her own reaction to him, scared of him getting physically any closer just in case her legs gave way and she did something undignified like swoon.

‘Sometimes mad can be fun,’ Nick mused. ‘Have you never done anything mad in your life, Rose?’

‘No.’ Rose laughed, this time a little hysterically. ‘No—’ she cleared her throat and tried to get a grip ‘—mad really isn’t me.’

‘How do you know if you’ve never tried?’

She had managed to somehow find herself with her back to the wall, which turned out to be not a very good idea as he now laid his hands on either side of her so that she seemed to be surrounded by him, locked in and deprived, if not literally of oxygen, then certainly of the ability to think coherently.

‘Here we are, Rose…on one of the most stunningly beautiful islands in the world. Outside, the night is like black velvet and in here…well, just the two of us…Shall I tell you what my mad thought is?’

No! Her head screamed. ‘What?’

‘This…’ Nick leant into her. She felt his hand cradle the back of her neck and she almost couldn’t believe what was happening even as her skin burned where he touched her.

‘No…’ she protested in a pathetically weak little voice and Nick half smiled, already hearing her submission and knowing, in that instant, that his suspicions had been right: she wanted him just as much as he wanted her. His body reared up with a sudden, savage heat that shocked him, and he brought his mouth down to hers, turned on by her small whimper as she parted her lips and closed her eyes.

Rose pressed her hands against his chest and felt the hard bunch of his muscles under the flat of her hand. Yes, of course she should push him away. That was a given.

She ran her hands over his chest, contouring the outline of his flat brown nipples, and moaned softly under her breath while his mouth continued to devour hers, catapulting common sense into orbit.

When she finally surfaced sufficiently to draw breath and speak, she did manage a weak protest, but her breasts, pressed against him, were aching and sensitive. Weeks of yearning left her helpless. The feel of him was like a miracle of revelation.

What had she ever done before? Had safe relationships and not even very many of them. She had chosen boyfriends on all the right grounds: compatibility, kindness, friendship.

This man was neither compatible, kind nor her friend and, even if she weren’t sharp enough to have sussed that for herself, his background spoke volumes. A life strewn with women who had stepped off the front covers of magazines, dismissive of commitment, driven but for reasons she had never valued.

Nick drew back and looked down at her. ‘One last chance,’ he said thickly.

‘For what?’ She knew exactly what he was talking about.

‘For decision-making. When morning comes, I don’t want to be accused of taking advantage of you.’

‘I would never do that.’

‘You misunderstand. We both go to your bedroom with our eyes wide open or tell me now to leave.’ And what would he do? Nick thought. Have another cold shower? Go for a swim in the sea? Switch on his computer and hope that numbers, reports and figures would distract him from the thought of her separated by the thickness of a wall?

He had never been in this position before, at the mercy of a woman, and he had to restrain himself from the indignity of trying to persuade her into the decision he wanted her to make.

Rose felt his body hard against hers. What choice did she have? Common sense was a plane-flight away. For now…it was time to be mad.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THIS was as overwhelming as the first fantasies of a teenage boy, although Nick was careful not to mention that to Rose. His body didn’t fail to remind him of the fact, though, as he led her into the bedroom and onto the wide, king-sized bed, still rumpled from where she had been lying, with a gap in the mosquito net through which she had slipped out, presumably on her way to the veranda.

His loose cotton trousers couldn’t begin to hide the urgency of his erection, but he was going to take his time, make love to her slowly and thoroughly.

‘Are you sure about this?’ He parted the mosquito net and looked to where she was sitting primly on the side of the bed.

‘Yes, you’re right. Everyone needs a little madness in their lives now and again.’

‘In which case, why do you look scared to death?’

Rose flushed and looked away quickly. ‘Do I?’

Nick, on the verge of slipping off the trousers, hesitated and then joined her on the bed, pulling the mosquito net behind him so that they were now enclosed in a little cocoon of their own. He might have, in the past, made the usual traditionally romantic gestures, sent the flowers, bought the expensive meals and the expensive tokens to go with the meals, but he was not essentially a romantic man. This, however, felt romantic and she looked the part. Eyes wide, mouth parted, hands clutching at the transparent nightgown.

‘You do,’ he said solemnly. ‘What are you afraid of? Haven’t we both established that we…want the same thing?’ He reached out with one hand and trailed his finger along her jaw line, then down to where her fingers were closed tightly around the shimmering, light material. ‘You needn’t worry. I’ll be gentle.’ Just talking about it was sending his normally cool, controlled nervous system through the roof.

‘You don’t understand…’

‘You’re not a virgin, are you?’

‘Of course not,’ Rose said indignantly, although she was guiltily aware that she really only managed to sneak into the experienced category by the skin of her teeth.

‘Care to tell me about them?’

‘No.’

Nick laughed. ‘No need to look so shocked, Rose.’

‘I suppose you do…this sort of thing all the time, don’t you?’

‘Sleep with women? I’m a red blooded male, Rose.’

‘No, I mean…Look, what I’m trying to say is that I’m not very daring in bed, Nick.’ Rose cleared her throat and looked at him defiantly. ‘You can go ahead and laugh now, but that’s the way it is. I haven’t spent a lifetime hopping in and out of beds with men.’

‘I like that,’ Nick murmured. Surprisingly, he really did, although he couldn’t say that he had encountered the situation before. Some of the women he had slept with were bolder than he was.

‘Furthermore…’

‘Furthermore?’ He couldn’t help himself. He leant towards her and planted a kiss on the side of her neck and he felt her shiver against him.

‘I…you’re not…’ She wished he wouldn’t look at her like that, giving her his undivided attention. ‘You’re…not the sort of guy…I mean, Lily normally…well, girls like Lily…’

‘I’m flattered that you have such a high opinion of me.’

‘I’m just talking about the way you look.’

‘That’s better. A bit of Rose rage.’ He grinned and she smiled sheepishly back at him. ‘You’re beautiful, Rose.’

‘Oh, please. There’s no need for that, Nick.’

‘Stop running yourself down,’ Nick said forcefully. He gently took her fingers in his hand and unpeeled them from their stranglehold on her nightgown. Then he pushed her back onto the bed, where she fell, breathing thickly, her hair splayed out in unruly curls around her face.

What had he ever seen in those stick insects with their angular bodies and bony limbs?

He slowly pulled her nightgown over her head and there she was, in all her fulsome, voluptuous, sensual splendour. For a few seconds, Nick feasted his eyes on her and Rose looked back at him from under her lashes. Watching me, watching you, she thought, getting so turned on that she thought she might explode at any minute.

All doubts that he might have found her less attractive than the models he cavorted with were driven out of her head by the naked appreciation in his eyes.

And that did something to her. Like a dam being unblocked, every inhibition she had ever nursed about the shape of her body flowed away in a rush of wild, abandoned passion.

Nick, watching, sensed the change of mood, something in the sinuous way she moved under his raking eyes, and with a low groan he bent his head so that he could nuzzle her generous breasts.

These weren’t small tomatoes, they were heavy, ripe fruit with big, defined nipples that hardened as he lavished his attention on them, suckling and feeling her wriggle underneath him in instant response.

Her skin was as smooth as satin and felt just as he had anticipated it would. Soft and womanly.

He dragged himself reluctantly away from her glorious breasts so that he could kiss her, long, slow kisses, punctuated by her soft moans.

‘Touch me again,’ she whispered.

‘Where?’

‘Where you were before…’ Never had it felt so good to have her breasts touched. Having spent a life time being self-conscious about the size of them, she felt wildly liberated at Nick’s obvious delight.

‘Enjoyed that, did you?’ he murmured, licking the side of her neck. ‘My mouth all over your breasts…your spectacular breasts…I’ve never seen such succulent, big nipples before.’

Rose was shocked by the sexuality of his language and turned on at the same time. His voice was dark and velvety and caressing and the way he moved against her…He was as turned on as she was, of that there was no doubt.

She reached down to touch him, but he covered her hand with his.

‘Not yet, my darling. I have to take things at my pace or else I might end up letting us both down.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I’m so turned on for you, I have to take things slowly.’

Rose smiled, understanding, and was filled with a sense of heady power that she could have this effect on this man.

She sighed as he massaged her breasts, lifting them to his mouth so that he could continue lathering them with his tongue, taking the nipples into his mouth and teasing the throbbing buds with his teeth. Wantonly, she arched up, thrusting herself towards him and moaning loudly as he ravaged her sensitive breasts.

She curled her fingers into his hair and half opened her eyes, following his progress down and then, as he parted her moistened labia, she fell back feverishly, hardly able to believe that she was allowing such an intimate exploration of her body.

She barely knew what to expect. Her knowledge of foreplay was limited and so her body was shameless and involuntary in its arousal.

As he flicked his tongue along the delicate pink flesh, and then deeper, sliding and rubbing her most feminine area, Rose felt herself spiralling into orbit. She writhed against his exquisite invasion and knew that she lacked the will-power and fierce control not to be tipped over the edge.

With a little tug, she pulled Nick up and he laughed softly, but obediently stopped his relentless assault that threatened to send her spinning out of control.

‘That was…’ Rose heard her own voice and barely recognised it. It was husky and breathless.

‘Mind-blowing?’

Before she could find a suitable answer, he parted her legs with his muscular thigh. ‘Now let me really blow your mind,’ he murmured.

It was one deep thrust. She would never have imagined that such a powerful and impressive member could enter her with such effortless ease to fill her up. He began moving inside her, slow, hard, rhythmic and he seemed to know exactly how her body worked because every time she felt herself reaching the inevitable, shattering climax, he would ease his tempo, allowing her to come back down so that he could remorselessly take her back up again.

Somewhere along the line, she was too lost in a world of sensation to really know when, he flipped them over so that she was lying on top of him, with his hands on her buttocks and her breasts dangling down, their swollen nipples perfect targets for his eager mouth.

There was no part of her body that wasn’t aroused. Bliss to feel him in her even while his mouth was avidly on her.

Bliss, even, afterwards, as she eased herself off him, wonderfully fulfilled, like the cat with a very full bowl of cream.

Yes, of course, the reality of the situation was only a thought away, but she was being mad, wasn’t she? Taking chances for the first time in her life? And it felt good.

‘We should get some sleep now,’ Rose said regretfully, ‘or else we’ll be like zombies in the morning.’ This was like a dream, lying here, curled into him and everything making sense because she loved him, against her will. Piercing through the dream, however, was the sure and certain knowledge that there was no way she could let him know that. Unrequited love was only bearable if it remained a secret.

But…

Rose hugged this thought to herself…what if he fell in love with her? Against all odds?

Sure, she wasn’t his type of woman, at least not in the expected sense, but he was seriously attracted to her, wasn’t he? And he did like her, didn’t he? Put those two things together and there it was, like a root beginning to take hold in the soil, the notion that in the days remaining to them she might just discover that her love stood a chance after all.

Having fought for a life that contained no nasty shocks and hence no surprises at all, Rose now found herself walking the perilous but exhilarating path of toying with what had seemed an impossible dream.

‘I’m lying in bed with you and you talk to me about getting some sleep?’ Nick ran his hand along her thigh. Sleep was the last thing on his mind, never mind the hour.

Rose smiled and closed her eyes. He made her feel wanton, something she had never felt before, and she stretched her arms above her head, tempting him with the breasts he seemed to like so much, loving the way his eyes darkened as they swept over her.

Their love-making was long and languorous. He touched her everywhere and she, emboldened by him, touched him everywhere and revelled in exploring his body.

It was five before they finally fell asleep, wrapped in each other’s arms, and Rose awakened to the sun doing its utmost to get a foothold in the room.

And an empty space next to her.

The dreams she had nurtured the night before, when everything had seemed tantalisingly within reach, began to dissipate like mist in the sun, but then she heard a slight sound and there he was, standing in her doorway, with a cup of coffee in his hand.

Rose sat up, pulling the sheet up to her neck, and drew her knees up with a smile.

‘For you.’ Nick strolled towards her with the cup of coffee.

‘How long have you been up?’

‘Oh, an hour or two.’

‘You should have woken me up.’ She yawned and took the cup from him, hoping a healthy injection of caffeine would revive her.

‘And missed the sight of you sleeping the sleep of the innocent?’

Rose marvelled that someone could look so good in a pair of baggy shorts and a fairly disreputable tee shirt.

‘I don’t feel innocent this morning,’ she confessed, shifting to make room so that he could sit on the bed next to her. ‘In fact, I feel…’

‘Wicked? Decadent?’ He tugged the sheet down and nodded. ‘Much better. I like the view far more without the sheet covering it.’

Rose blushed and grinned and gulped down some tea. Mrs Rose Papaeliou. Nice ring to it, she thought.

‘Something like that. I’ve never…just had a one-night stand. Believe it or not, I’m not that kind of girl.’

‘I believe you, and whoever said that this was going to be a one-night stand?’

Hope flared but she managed to keep her expression neutral. ‘Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll be up,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘What do we have planned for today?’

‘Oh, I thought we would spend the rest of our time here doing a little exploring of our own.’ He stood up and shot her a wolfish grin that made her toes curl in anticipation. ‘How do you feel about scuba-diving?’

Rose thought that pretty much anything in the company of Nick Papaeliou would be an inviting prospect.

And there was no Lee Peng in tow. He had flown to Indonesia for a week to oversee another building project. The various people with whom they had liaised were no longer necessary, Nick informed her.

Which just left the two of them on their own and the delights of Sabah and its surroundings.

Nick thought that boredom might set in. After all, wasn’t that the way of the world? And they were in each other’s company twenty-four seven.

Good old common sense told him that, without those necessary absences during which batteries could be recharged and tedium kept at bay, he was almost certain to tire of her company.

To his surprise, he didn’t. She teased him mercilessly and he discovered he enjoyed it.

It was relaxing and invigorating being in her company. They scuba-dived and she proved herself pretty fearless, a side effect of having nomadic guardians, she explained, while sniggering that he seemed a little wary of the big blue sea.

They went to the local open market, which sold fruit and vegetables of every shape, size and description, many of them unrecognisable. They ate miniature figs that were sweet as sugar and drank ice-cold coconut water straight from the split coconuts that were sold in the stalls.

They dared each other to cross a bedraggled suspension bridge and then congratulated themselves afterwards by making love in a secluded part of the dense foliage and bush that fanned the river.

Without the rigid dimensions imposed by everyday life, it was easy to take that step out of sync, to explore each other without guilt and, as Rose admitted to herself, to make no attempts at holding back her headlong fall into love.

But it didn’t matter because she was seeing a new side to Nick. He laughed a lot and was utterly relaxed. He had even stopped working. He took only essential calls on his mobile. Most of the time, he would glance at the number and ignore it.

Rose took that as a very good sign indeed. He wanted to spend time in her company, he enjoyed being with her to such an extent that he was willing to forgo work, and that said a great deal because, having worked alongside him, she knew that work was something Nick never, ever sidelined.

And the sex…The sex was remarkable. He was forceful, considerate, inventive and utterly irresistible.

When he looked at her, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and one touch was enough to reduce her to instant meltdown.

After a life of carefully made choices, Rose was not equipped to defend herself against the overwhelming force of what she felt.

Anyway, she didn’t want to. She wanted to be reckless.

She wanted to have his arms around her as they sat on the beach and watched the sun set. She wanted him to close that bedroom door and move towards her, every muscle in his body alert with the same hunger she felt for him. She wanted to cling to her dreams that her perfect love would be returned.

Which, on the last night of their stay, brought her to the very delicate matter of how, exactly, she might find out what his intentions towards her were.

‘Tonight’s meal was fantastic,’ she said, which was the most roundabout route she could think to discuss the fact that their holiday was now at an end. ‘In fact, the food over here has been exquisite. Such flavours. I love the multi-ethnic cuisine.’ Thinking that she was beginning to sound a little like a restaurant critic, she bit back the temptation to carry the theme through.

‘You’re gabbling, Rose. Lie back and enjoy the stars and the sound of the sea.’

Rose obediently lay down next to him on the wide beach towel provided courtesy of the hotel, which seemed to know that sun loungers were not to everyone’s taste. Especially, she thought, late at night when you wanted to be physically close to someone. Like now.

She tried to submerge herself in the ambience but her thoughts were whirring around in her head and she finally said, casually, ‘Bit of a change, all this, isn’t it? From London, I mean…’

‘Huge change.’

‘Be strange to go back tomorrow.’

‘Very strange.’ He sounded faintly surprised at that admission. ‘But reality’s never further than a stone’s throw away.’

‘I thought that was rats.’

‘In my line of work, the two are often interlinked.’

Rose could feel him grinning in the dark but she didn’t want to relax and enjoy his sense of humour, as she had done for the past few days. She wanted to pry beneath the surface and find out what happened next in their chapter, because she was sure that there would be a next.

‘Will you miss…being here?’ With me?

‘All good things come to an end.’ Nick shrugged, his hand, under her neck, hanging, almost touching her breast. ‘That’s just the way it is.’

‘Which…’ Rose decided to take the bull by the horns because they could sit around talking in metaphors all night and get nowhere ‘…leaves us where?’

Well, Nick thought with disappointment, it had to happen eventually. The bubble had to burst. He had idiotically thought that Rose, who was in a league of her own, would be the exception to the rule, the one woman who didn’t start questioning the future and trying, thereby, to pin him down to promises of ever afters he had no intention of making.

‘Well, I think we can safely say that your stint working for me is now over. Shy of a week or so, but we’ve accomplished what we set out to do, wouldn’t you agree? You must be looking forward to getting back to your old routine. Are you?’

‘Yes, of course I am.’ In truth, she had barely missed her old job and was certainly not looking forward to returning to the grindstone having sampled the excitement of working for Nick, where every day brought new challenges. However, she wasn’t a fool. She might have abandoned common sense, she might have dared to hope that her flight of fancy would bring her the result she wanted, but she could read nuances as well as the next person. Better. Over the years her ingrained sensitivity had fine-tuned her antennae and her antennae were now telling her that he was backing away from giving her a direct answer for a reason and there could only be one reason. Whatever he felt for her, it wasn’t love. It wasn’t even enough to give her any kind of commitment. The man who had always walked away from relationships of any depth was walking away now and Rose felt as though her lifeblood were draining out of her system.

What had she been thinking? That the way his eyes darkened when he saw her naked counted as love? Or that the easy way they talked and laughed and touched really meant something?

Inside she was hurting so much that she suddenly couldn’t bear the feel of his arm around her. Outside, though, she controlled her voice and schooled her expression even though he couldn’t see her face and made sure to sound as calm as she could as she started to chat about what had been happening in her old job, updates from her friends whom she had barely seen over the past few months.

‘Naturally, this doesn’t have to mean the end of…what we have,’ Nick murmured, and Rose could feel him turn towards her. What, she wanted to ask, exactly do we have? For him, yet another pointless relationship based on satisfying sex and for her…more heartbreak, more involvement, more misery in the end.

‘Oh, I think it should, really…’

‘You don’t mean that.’ Nick turned completely towards her and tilted her head so that he could kiss the side of her neck and Rose shrugged him off and sat up.

‘I do.’ She looked over her shoulder at him. Moonlight becomes him…wasn’t there a song that went like that? He was just wearing an old tee shirt and a pair of faded jeans, but she knew every inch of his perfect body now, knew the lazy strength and muscular body encased in the casual clothing. She wondered how she could ever have thought that he might actually fall in love with her, the way she had fallen in love with him.

Would he return to England and be embarrassed to be seen with her? He had told her often enough that he loved her curves, found them incredibly sexy, that stick-thin, in comparison, was a turn-off. But that was here, where everything had been in a state of unreal suspension. She would bet her newly refurbished house that the minute they stepped back onto English soil stick-thin would suddenly be desirable because stick-thin represented the sort of model type he needed hanging on his arm.

He would always run true to form and she had been a fool to have thought otherwise. He was, and always had been, out of her league.

Rose stood up and dusted herself down. He, of course, was still lying on the towel, hands behind his head, probably, she thought, convinced that he could talk her round. Maybe for a few more romps in the hay back in England, where he would keep her hidden away and out of sight.

‘This has been great.’ She gesticulated vaguely around her. ‘The scenery, the atmosphere, the romance of being out of England and in the hot sun. Now it’s finishing…’

‘You asked what was going to become of us.’ Nick sat up. ‘That implies that you consider us an item.’

‘I meant in connection with work,’ she lied. ‘I thought it would be awkward being stuck in each other’s company, pretending that nothing had happened between us.’

‘Stuck in each other’s company?’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. What I meant was…’ Now he was standing up, which instantly made her feel a lot less assured. ‘Look, this has been brilliant. I never thought…well, my first impressions of you weren’t all that flattering but I’ve enjoyed every minute of being here with you. We had fun, didn’t we?’

Nick couldn’t quite believe his ears. Shouldn’t he be the one giving the Dear John lecture? Shouldn’t he be the one doing the letting down slowly and gently?

Anyway, whoever said that it had to end just yet? Sure, he didn’t want a strings-attached relationship. Never had, probably never would. Which didn’t mean that they couldn’t continue enjoying each other until time did its thing and they both decided to move on.

‘Sure, it’s been fun.’ He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans and stared at her. That sexy body…that light, infectious laughter…Well, this was her choice and the right one, really. ‘And I’m glad you’re…so calm about this…’

‘What did you expect?’ Rose asked lightly. ‘Tears and histrionics?’

Nick shrugged and began walking back to their rooms. This was most definitely not how he had expected to spend his last night in Borneo. ‘Maybe nothing so extreme,’ he grated as she fell in step with him. ‘You’re not the tears and histrionics kind of girl, are you?’

Certainly not in public and definitely not when she’d made a complete idiot of herself.

‘Not really.’

‘And I’m glad about that.’ He stopped and Rose continued walking for a few steps before turning around to look at him. ‘I wouldn’t want to have hurt you in any way. You know me, Rose.’ He laughed softly although something inside him felt slightly sick. Probably, he figured, because he had had the rug pulled very neatly from under his feet. Well, everyone needed a shake-up now and again and he was no exception. It hurt because the feeling was so damned alien to him. ‘I can’t give promises of commitment and settling down.’

‘And I wouldn’t want them,’ she said quickly. ‘Certainly not from you. We clicked in bed, but there’s so much more to relationships than just clicking in the sack.’

Nick wasn’t sure he much liked that, but he gave her a brief nod, which could have been agreement or simply acknowledgement of what she was trying to say.

‘But, and I never thought that I would say this, I’m grateful to you, and not just because you bailed me out of a financial mess. I’m looking forward to going back to my old job, but you’ve given me the confidence to think about new pastures, not to rely on just doing the same thing day in and day out and thinking that it’s fine because I know the routine.’

‘Glad to be of service,’ Nick told her coolly.

‘Course, I’ll make sure that I have all the written reports ready for you by next Monday.’

‘No need.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m no longer convinced that I’ll be siting Borneo for my hotel.’

‘Why not?’ Rose asked, astounded at his U-turn. ‘It’s an amazing island. And you’ve put in so much time in getting to know it.’

‘Yes, it’s an amazing island and if tourism is to kick in, then I would rather not be the one to introduce it. It’s easy for a unique place like this to lose its innocence because of rampant commercialism.’ And besides, he thought angrily, Borneo would forever remind him of her. They had spent some pretty intense days together and she had imprinted too much of it with her stamp. How could he ever walk along this stretch of beach again without thinking about her? And that wouldn’t do. He had let his guard down, allowed her to get under his skin, and let this, he thought, be a lesson to him.

She was delivering some heartfelt speech about tasteful and controlled tourism and the benefits to a local community and he sliced through her ramblings with dismissive ease, pleased to have her reduced to silence.

‘You make some valid points, but my decision is made.’ Churlish would be to make a big deal of the fact that she had, like it or not, ended their relationship. Churlish, in other words, would be to allow his ego to be involved. On the other hand, he could be as relieved as she appeared to be that the whole thing was over and, honestly, he was. Good while it lasted but all good things came to an end and it was best to part company on good terms. The ideal scenario when it came to the opposite sex, if he thought about it.

‘So…’ he injected some warmth into his voice as they began to stroll back to the hotel complex ‘…all packed?’

‘Check.’

‘Including those ridiculous souvenirs you insisted on buying at the market a couple of days ago?’

‘They weren’t ridiculous. You’ll be sorry you didn’t invest in a couple yourself when you get back to England and realise that they would have looked very fetching on your walls.’ She kept her voice as light as she could, but now the bantering that had led her to think of what they had as something special hurt beyond endurance.

‘Name two places where colourful masks would have blended in.’

‘You mean against the stark white walls and expensive abstracts?’

Rose heard herself conducting this perfectly normal conversation from a distance, almost as though she were hovering over herself, watchful and detached.

When they were finally standing outside their rooms, she smiled at him, gratefully, she hoped, and stuck out her hand, which he pointedly ignored.

‘That’s a bit ridiculous,’ he drawled. ‘Yes, we’ve both reached the same conclusion that this was a holiday fling best left on the island, but I think shaking hands is slightly ludicrous.’ He bent and kissed her on the mouth, but this was a fond, farewell kiss, devoid of the urgency and hunger she had become accustomed to, and it hurt like hell.

It did, however, set the tone for the next day, during which they were affable, polite and very, very busy. Flights, work that Nick suddenly remembered needed to be done and books that Rose decided should have been read.

She could already feel the mantle of England settling back over her long before the plane finally touched down at Heathrow.

She had feverishly wondered how they would actually part company when the moment arrived, but in all events it was an anticlimax. Nick spotted someone he knew and, before she could brace herself for the hellishness of the final goodbye, he was kissing her fondly on the cheek and excusing himself. Would she be okay to handle a taxi back herself? Just a couple of things he wanted to talk to Ed Duggins about…take care of yourself…hope the house lives up to expectations…The usual platitudes, but his mind was already somewhere else. He had moved on.

Rose went directly to her house. She had been there almost every day to supervise the work in progress and had left her painter and decorator in charge of replastering and wallpapering over the mess made by the builders.

At any rate, that was exciting. She was delivered to her door in a black cab and, once inside the house, wandered around taking in the changes, and there were a fair few of those. Terry had done an excellent job. Everywhere looked new and smelt new.

And it was all paid for. She told herself that she should be over the moon, but as it turned out the only thing she had to smile about was her phone call to her sister.

Lily was coming home. Just for a couple of weeks because the leading man had apparently done something unfortunate to his ankle. Filming would skirt around him, but her scenes were already shot.

Her voice down the other end of the phone was like a tonic and Rose couldn’t help herself. For once she wasn’t the one holding everything together. And for once Lily was the strong half, soothing, reassuring, safe in her own area of expertise—namely men.

‘Don’t worry, Rosie. I’m coming home and everything’s gonna be fine. Wait and see.’

Somewhere in middle America, Lily smiled to herself as she hung up the phone—Rose needed her and that felt good, and, even better, she was going to make sure that everything really was all right for her sister.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘NOW that you’ve been back nearly two weeks, I think it’s time we went out and had a good time. I’m heading back to America next Wednesday and I can’t bear the thought of leaving you alone here when you’re so miserable.’

Rose looked at her sister and tried to imagine whether she was capable of ever having a good time again. Not a word from Nick since they had returned to England. Not a phone call, not a message left on the answering machine, nothing. It was as though she had never existed in his eyes.

For Lily’s sake, she had played down her feelings, but her talents as an actor must have been less successful than she had thought because here was her sister now, looking at her worriedly, in fact the way she had looked at Lily many a time in the past. The shoe was very securely on the other foot.

‘I’m not miserable, Lily. I’m tired. And, besides, I haven’t got time to have a good time.’ Rose looked at her sister over the rim of her mug.

‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘Sure it does. I mean, I’ve only been back at my old job a few days and you wouldn’t believe the stack of work that was waiting for me. A lovely little collection of jobs no one else wanted to do.’ Every single one of which was utterly boring, she was tempted to add, but didn’t because she was determined, after her initial confession and shameful blubbing down the phone, not to make a fuss. She had lost her head and had her moment of madness and now was time to pick up the pieces and not wallow in a tide of self-pity. At least, not in public.

‘But it’s a Saturday, Rose.’ Lily sighed dramatically.

‘Don’t worry about me, I want you to go out and have fun. As you said, Lily, you’ll be heading back in a few days. You want to catch up with all your fans before you go.’ Rose smiled at her sister. The phone had not stopped ringing since Lily had arrived back. Friends wanting to meet up and, according to Lily, who had developed a healthy streak of cynicism since working in America, not-nearly-friends who wanted to rub shoulders with someone in the movie business.

‘No. You and I are going to go out tonight. Nice little jazz club in the West End. You can get your glad rags on and I’ll ask a couple of people I met when I was in America who are over here as well. We’ll make it a cosy evening.’ Lily was not about to take no for an answer. She had promised herself that she would make sure that Rose was just fine by the time she returned to America and she wasn’t about to jettison that goal. She gave her a coaxing but implacable smile.

Several hours later and Rose wasn’t sure whether to be amused or alarmed by her sister’s newly acquired ability to chivvy.

Chivvied from shop to shop because retail therapy was, apparently, the best form of therapy. Then from shop to beauty parlour where Rose’s short nails were turned into works of art with pearly pink nail polish. Then onward from the beauty parlour to the hairdresser’s, conveniently and suspiciously pre-booked, where her naturally curly hair underwent some weird metamorphosis and emerged a fabulous tumble of windblown curls rather than her usual unkempt, unmanageable mess. And brilliantly gold, thanks to some clever mixing of dyes. Lots of highlights everywhere.

Lily pronounced herself satisfied and they returned to the house energised with several carrier bags and, in Rose’s case, a complete makeover.

Course, she thought, she would never be lean and glamorous like her sister, but she hadn’t exactly looked fat in the dressing rooms.

‘You’ve lost weight,’ Lily announced airily, not for the first time reading her sister’s mind as she dumped the bags on the kitchen table. She poured Rose a glass of wine to get her in the mood, and plonked herself down on one of the chairs. ‘I kinda liked the old you,’ Lily said wistfully. ‘Cuddly and comfortable.’

Rose wondered whether that was how Nick had seen her. As cuddly and comfortable, like an old cushion that was just right for sleeping with when nothing better was available. She rescued herself from pointlessly worrying the thought and smiled as Lily went on to talk about the people she had met in America, and their obsession with food. They either seemed to eat too much or eat too little. Doughnut emporiums squatted alongside organic health food shops and she had seen people leaving their gyms, still perspiring from their workouts, to head directly to the nearest hot-dog stand where they would proceed to order the largest of everything.

Rose was quietly convinced that Lily would return to England. She had confided on more than one occasion, looking over her shoulder as though one of those Bigwigs she kept mentioning might pop out from behind a bush, that there was too much pressure in America to be thin, to be competitive, to suck up to the right people. Lily, having inherited Tony and Flora’s basic bohemian disregard for personal wealth, couldn’t understand why everyone seemed so willing to jump through hoops for yet more money, which they obviously didn’t need.

‘Anyway, you’re sick of me going on about this.’ She grinned. ‘Maybe I’ll just return to London when I’m done there. My CV will be a whole lot healthier, thanks to Nick, and I can just get a nice little job in a soap opera.’

Nick. Not once had she asked her sister whether she had seen Nick. She had told herself that she wasn’t interested, that the past was the past, but she knew, really, that she was just scared. Scared that she might want her sister to tell her too much. Scared that the floodgates, which she was trying hard to close, would crash open again and she would be lost.

‘Right.’ All assertive once again, Lily stood up, topped Rose’s glass of wine with a fraction more, and ordered her to go and get changed but to do absolutely nothing with her make-up because she, Lily, would do it for her.

‘You wouldn’t believe the tips I’ve got from the girls who make me up.’ She laughed. ‘Believe me, it’s all in the brush strokes.’

‘You’re chivvying again.’ But Rose laughed because it was just so good not to be on her own. She had missed Lily, but only now was she realising by how much.

‘And it feels good. Now I can understand why you spent your life chivvying me around as a kid.’

There was no rush and Rose took her time getting dressed. Yes, she really had lost weight and it suited her. She had also been coerced into buying a little black number that she would never have dared to have worn a few months ago. It had a plunging neckline, one of her great no-noes previously, and exposed more than a generous eyeful of cleavage. With high heels, she felt quite pleased with herself. The dress fitted snugly to the waist, then flared out to just above the knees.

By the time Lily had sorted out her costume jewellery and applied the make-up, Rose felt her spirits lift. She could almost believe her own mantra that she was well rid of Nick, that life was just about to begin, that all experience, in hindsight, was good experience, that he was little more than a dot on her learning curve brought on by temporary insanity. Of course, the two and a half glasses of white wine helped.

They took a taxi and just when Rose was beginning to warm to the idea of not staying in, Lily dropped the bombshell.

Nick was going to be there. Well, he might be there. But don’t worry about it. Wouldn’t it be good to prove to him how much she had managed to get her act together? There was no need to fuss. She looked fabulous. She couldn’t spend her days scuttling away from the possibility of seeing him again. Sooner or later the time would come when she would meet him because she, Lily, remained good friends with him and grateful for everything he had done to help her with her career. Never run scared, that was the key thing.

Rose, despairingly, toyed with the idea of demanding that the taxi driver turn around and take her back home.

Then, if not back home, at least to the nearest pub so that she could fortify her nerves with a couple more glasses of wine.

But she was given little opportunity to object because Lily, with all her newly acquired bossiness, kept up a never-ending monologue for most of the trip, and Rose glumly took on board that her sister had a point. Why should she be scared? It wasn’t as if Nick had guessed her shameful secret. He had no idea that what to him had been a fling had, for her, been the love of a lifetime. She looked good and if there was one thing he had done for her, it had been to inject a level of confidence in her appearance that she had never really had. He had made her feel sexy and the residue of that confidence was still there. The little black dress looked great and if he did turn up, big if because, as Lily had pointed out, he was mega busy and the invite had been last-minute, then she would damn well show him that she was doing fine.

The jazz club was tucked away in a side road a million miles away on the other side of London. Rose had no idea how her sister had managed to discover the place, but it was certainly popular. Despite being early, the venue was already beginning to fill up. She had no time to wonder whether she was feeling nervous about meeting Nick because over the next hour or so she was wrapped up in the business of meeting Lily’s friends, a fair few of whom were American and flatteringly thrilled to be in a genuine British club and not one of those that catered for the loaded tourists.

This was new for Rose, this feeling of blending in with a crowd of people, all strangers to her. She was determined not to drink too much, but the music was sexy and, although she stuck to wine, she found her glass being replaced without her having to ask or even make her way to the bar.

The dress, she thought, was proving even more effective than she could ever have dared to hope.

Several men seemed to find her fascinating, although it was hard to tell because the atmospheric lighting bordered on downright dark. Certainly one in particular had taken her under his wing and had been responsible for at least two glasses of wine, the last of which Rose was now drinking very slowly indeed as she listened to him tell her about his latest film, a short film noir, which had had a very successful première at the Cannes festival.

Lily had asked a lot of her old friends, but most of the new faces belonged to the world of film and media. Rose had never met so many men who seemed to be film producers. They were very entertaining, even if she had never heard of a single one of the films they had produced. A lot of them, she noticed, sported pony-tails, which looked very trendy. Miles apart, she thought nastily, from Nick, who was as traditional as they went when it came to fashion. Long hair and jewellery on men, he had told her, were strictly for hippies, and she had laughed and accused him of being narrow-minded.

The memory made her heart constrict.

At least he wasn’t around. She had kept one beady eye open so that she could take appropriate measures to avoid him, but it was now after ten and he was nowhere in sight, obviously too busy to get away.

Disappointment bit into her and she favoured her companion with a wide, reckless smile.

Which was when she spotted him, standing on the other side of the room, with a leggy red-haired woman on his arm. She looked as though she had been poured into her small silver dress.

Rose felt her heart skip a beat and, weirdly, the noise, the people, even the band playing a slow number on the little raised podium, seemed to fade away, leaving just the sight of him, as sexy as she remembered, in a pair of dark-coloured trousers and a white shirt, casually rolled to the elbows.

Well, he seemed to have managed to relegate her to the history books in no time at all, Rose thought bitterly. Less than a month and he was back to his cover-girl babes.

She gulped down what was left in her glass and concentrated on what the man by her side was saying. His name was Ted, although his friends, for reasons that escaped her, called him Splice, and he was giving her the low-down on the people he had met at the Cannes Festival, a warts-and-all account that would have been hilarious had her attention not been suddenly hijacked by her ex-lover, now excusing himself and heading for the bar while the red-haired beauty sashayed over to the nearest group of men, one of whom she clearly knew. The world of actors, models and musicians was a very small one, Lily had told her.

Rose gaily accepted another drink from Ted Splice, as she called him in her head, and was making sure not to look in the direction of the redhead just in case Nick returned to his date and noticed her staring, when she felt the tap on her shoulder.

She spun round and there he was. She’d been certain she hadn’t been noticed, but he must have seen her as he was making his way back from the bar.

Rose felt her heart skip a beat, then she produced the same sparkly smile she had perfected with Ted.

‘Good heavens. Fancy seeing you here. How are you?’ She noticed that he failed to produce a reciprocal smile. In fact, his expression was cool and Rose was suddenly enraged that he should chuck her aside and then, as if that weren’t bad enough, treat her to the cold shoulder.

‘You seem to be having a good time,’ Nick drawled, giving her a leisurely appraisal.

‘Oh, I am.’

‘Bit of a change for you, isn’t it? This kind of thing?’

‘Well, you know what they say about a change being as good as a rest. I hadn’t expected it to be quite as large as this, but I’m having a brilliant time, meeting loads of really interesting people.’

‘So I couldn’t help but notice.’

His voice dripped ice and Rose wondered whether, having an ego the size of a house, he had expected her to be sitting indoors pining for him. Little could he guess that she had pretty much been doing just that until tonight.

‘What about you?’ she asked politely. ‘Having a good time? Did you come with anyone? I guess you know quite a few of the people here anyway…’ She was gratified to notice that even the subdued lighting couldn’t quite hide his dark flush and she gave him her most innocent look.

‘As a matter of fact, I did come with someone. She’s over there somewhere.’ He indicated somewhere behind her while keeping his eyes firmly fixed on her face, and Rose dutifully turned around to see the redhead looking daggers at her.

‘Oh, dear. Your date doesn’t look awfully happy that you’ve abandoned her. You’d better run along before she blows a fuse.’

Nick, whose mood seemed to be deteriorating by the second, scowled. ‘My date is more than capable of taking care of herself for a few minutes.’ He bared his teeth in a smile. ‘Besides, I don’t think she would begrudge me catching up with an old…friend…’ Of course he had known that she would be there and he had brought along the arm candy to remind himself that he had done the right thing, they had both done the right thing—parted company because at the end of the day she was a settling-down kind of girl and he was a no-commitment kind of guy. That was just the way it was. He liked variety. The redhead filled that role.

‘I don’t think there’s much to catch up on.’ Rose frowned and made a show of giving his remark all the attention it deserved. ‘I’m back at my old job and enjoying it and…’ she could be as cool and dismissive as he was ‘…you were very useful in teaching me that madness isn’t always a bad thing. As you can see, I’ve taken that advice to heart.’ She laughed gaily. ‘I’d have steered a million miles away from something like this in the past—as you pointed out…’

He had been useful? Nick didn’t appreciate the compliment, not at all.

‘There’s madness and there’s stupidity, Rose,’ he gritted. ‘Madness is breaking out of your comfort zone and coming here tonight…’

‘And stupidity?’ She was pretty sure she wasn’t going to like his answer, but that, in a way, would surely work for her, because how on earth would she ever get closure if she carried on loving him? Let him show himself in all his arrogant glory, she willed.

‘Stupidity is wearing that dress.’

Rose’s mouth fell open in shock. She gave an incredulous laugh. ‘You object to my dress?’ She glanced significantly over her shoulder to where his date gave the term skimpy clothing a whole new meaning.

‘That’s completely different,’ Nick growled.

‘Oh, and why is that? Because she’s tall and skinny and can carry off wearing handkerchiefs better than me?’

‘Because…’ Because she’s as sexy as a runner bean, Nick thought savagely. He deeply resented the fact that the woman standing in front of him, flaunting herself to all and sundry, was still on his mind, despite all his efforts to wipe her out. ‘Because,’ he grated, ‘you could land yourself in a situation you wouldn’t be able to handle dressed like that. Did you look in the mirror before you left your house? Do you have any idea how much of your…you is on show?’

‘It’s been nice chatting to you, Nick. Now, I think I see Splice coming with my drink.’

‘Splice?’

‘That’s his nickname.’ Rose smiled sweetly and walked away without giving him the chance to continue the conversation. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her sister looking in her direction and she waved cheerfully, not wanting to spoil the evening by having Lily worrying about her. Again.

The minute Lily could escape, however, Rose was dismayed to find that she was by her side and Rose just knew what her sister was going to say.

‘What on earth was going on with the two of you back then?’ Lily asked, jumping straight in with both feet and making Rose feel even guiltier that her sister had noticed more than she had first suspected. ‘What was Nick saying to you?’

‘Lily, never you mind that. I’m not going to spoil your last Saturday night in London by repeating what that man had the nerve to say.’ At one in the morning, the crowd was beginning to thin out. Most of Lily’s friends had headed off, with a couple of the guys insisting on giving Rose their phone numbers although she, tactfully, declined to return the favour. Still, it was flattering even if she couldn’t get Nick’s nasty remark about her dress out of her head.

He, as luck would have it, was still around somewhere, with the redhead clutching him possessively as if scared that he might disappear unless physically restrained. Which, of course, he would. Rose, consistently aware of his presence, made sure to live up to her statement that she was having a brilliant time. She was pretty sure that, at one point, Ted had even asked if she would consider starring in one of his productions, which had resulted in fits of laughter on her part. She had half hoped that Nick might have glanced over at that point and witnessed for himself just how much fun she was having.

Wrapped up in her mental reverie, she became aware of Lily pressing her for details, and eventually she gave in, telling her that he had criticised her dress and dared to suggest that she was somehow sending off the wrong messages and then, having done that, would be incapable of taking care of herself. Lily was nodding, taking it all in, and finally said, ‘You can’t let him get away with that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You should be angry. Fuming!’

‘Well…yes…I am…’

‘You need to march over there and let him know that you’re not just anyone. In fact, you need to let him know that you’re more than capable of taking care of yourself. In fact, Splice was mightily impressed by you…’ Lily glanced at her nails, painted a vibrant, deep purple. ‘Nick might just want to know that he’s not the only guy interested in you…’

‘He isn’t interested in me.’

‘I’ll distract Cat—’

‘Cat?’ What cat? What was Lily on about?

‘His date for the evening. She likes to call herself that. Her real name’s Nancy. I met her briefly in my modelling days.’

‘I don’t think—’

‘Quite right. Don’t think. Thinking just complicates matters.’ She pushed Rose out towards where Nick was standing and holding court with several of the pony-tailed men.

There she went. Chivvying again. What was she supposed to say to Nick? She just wanted to go home, but the redhead was being suitably distracted and the pony-tail brigade was breaking up, heading off, leaving her alone with him.

‘My sister wanted your girlfriend to meet a friend of hers…’ was all Rose could think of saying. ‘Her name’s Cat, I gather.’

‘She’s not my girlfriend.’

‘Oh. Date, in that case.’ Rose shrugged as if she was bored with the business of him splitting hairs. ‘It’s been nice meeting you again, Nick. I’m off now.’

‘Wait just a minute.’ He caught hold of her arm as she was turning away and Rose tensed. ‘How much have you had to drink?’

‘What I’ve had to drink has nothing to do with you.’

‘No? How are you going to get back to your house?’

‘In a taxi. With Lily.’ Where was her sister, anyway? ‘Or not, as the case may be.’ Her skin burnt where he was holding her, bringing back memories she wanted to forget, and she looked at him with unhidden hostility.

‘I’ll take you home.’

‘You’ll do no such thing.’ Alarm and panic slammed into her with such force that she took a step backwards.

‘Your sister’s not around and nor are any of those creeps who were drooling down your front all night.’

‘They were not creeps. In fact—’ she smirked ‘—Ted’s desperate to get in touch with me. He’s a movie producer, you know.’ Or maybe it was advertising. She couldn’t quite remember.

That clarified something in Nick’s head. The woman might think that she was embarking on some crazy hedonistic lifestyle, but she had no idea what she was letting herself in for. He had met sufficient movie producers in his time, thanks to his history of dating women in the modelling or acting business, and he knew that kindly, thoughtful and caring were not adjectives commonly used to describe them.

‘Did you bring a jacket?’

‘You are not taking me home.’ Rose looked around desperately for her sister. ‘Anyway, you can’t bring a date and then abandon her. How is your girlfriend going to get home?’

‘Wait right here.’

Rose had no intention of doing any such thing. She tripped along behind Nick and reached her sister just as he was explaining the need to deliver Rose back to the house unless Lily was on her way out. Which she wasn’t, never mind the pointed looks and contorted gestures Rose was delivering behind Nick’s back.

‘I’ve got to stay until the last person leaves,’ Lily said gaily, ignoring her sister. ‘Only polite. And Cat can’t possibly go yet. Not when I’ve just introduced her to Joe Carr here. Can you, Cat?’

Rose had never seen anyone truly wriggle on the horns of a dilemma, but Cat did now. She was obviously furious at the thought of her date clearing off with another woman, even though the woman was no competition, but the prospect of networking with someone from the film industry who might prove useful later down the line was irresistible.

She did the best she could under the circumstances and all credit to her, Rose thought nastily, she did it well.

‘Call me,’ she purred to Nick, and then reached forward to pull him towards her. From behind, Rose watched the slender pale fingers with perfectly painted long red nails comb his dark hair and, from what she could see, he was thoroughly enjoying the kiss.

The sight made her feel sick to her stomach. What further proof could she have that he had forgotten her? Wearing a sexy black dress and flirting madly with people whose names she could barely remember suddenly struck her as very sad.

Lily, she noticed, was staring at her, and Rose composed her features into bland indifference, which was the stance she maintained as Nick ushered her out of the club, fetching her jacket en route, and into the sharp early morning air.

His driver was waiting outside and she climbed into the back seat of the car in silence.

‘So…’ Nick slammed the door behind him and turned to her ‘…you’re suddenly very quiet.’

‘I’m tired.’

‘We still have a conversation to finish.’

‘What conversation?’ Rose looked at him with a sigh. ‘We don’t have anything left to finish, Nick. We’ve both moved on.’

Nick frowned at her. ‘Which doesn’t mean that I don’t still have…’ feelings for you. Except that there was something somehow significant about saying that. So he avoided it. ‘A sense of responsibility towards you. After all, Rose, we were lovers, whether you like it or not.’

‘And now you’re scratching another notch on your bedpost. If it makes you feel better, I absolve you from all responsibility towards me. I don’t need your misguided sense of duty, Nick. You employed me because you were Lily’s friend and you felt sorry for me when I was in a financial mess. Now you feel sorry for me because—’

‘I don’t feel sorry for you,’ he snapped sharply.

‘Then what? I don’t want you to involve yourself in my life.’

She slid her eyes over to him. Earlier, she had felt tipsy and mellow and just that little bit out of control. Right now, she couldn’t have felt more sober. ‘Do you always feel as though you’ve got to look out for the hapless women you’ve been involved with?’

‘You consider yourself hapless?’

‘I consider myself…changed…’

‘So you said earlier.’ Nick’s voice was acid. ‘I wasn’t sure whether or not to be flattered by the adjective you used for me as useful.’

No, he wouldn’t be. Useful wasn’t exactly a sexy term. It was probably also a little too close to used for Nick’s liking, but Rose didn’t care because wasn’t that what he did with all the women who littered his life?

‘And people don’t change overnight, Rose. You can’t suddenly turn into a woman who lives life on the edge. You’ve never been that kind of woman. You remember telling me how much Tony and Flora turned you off the idea of taking chances because of the lifestyle they chose? They wanted you to want adventure. Instead you found your adventure in books.’

‘Yes, and now I’ve decided that they were right after all. I’m too young to bury myself in books when there’s a whole world out there waiting to be lived.’

‘And you intend to live every minute of it in revealing clothes.’

‘So what if I do? What business is it of yours? You’ve rescued me once. There’s no need to make a habit of it.’

The driver was at long last approaching the house and Rose located her glittery handbag and tucked her jacket a little tighter around her shoulders, ready to sprint from car to front door in the shortest possible time.

The frame of the redhead’s fingers clawing into Nick’s hair repeated itself endlessly in her head, like a snippet of film viewed in slow motion.

‘I’m not trying to rescue you,’ Nick grated, leaping out of the car as soon as it had stopped.

‘Don’t let me keep you.’ Rose turned the key in the lock, pushed open the door and smiled sweetly at him.

The woman was crazy, Nick thought. Had she no idea what sort of temptation she presented to a red-blooded male? Wearing a dress like that with everything on display? Her cleavage was just a teasing reminder of her succulent breasts, which he considered outrageously hugged by the thin, stretchy fabric. If she was his, he thought, there was no way that he would let her out of the house looking like that.

‘You’re not getting rid of me that quickly,’ he growled, pushing the door wide open with the flat of his hand and stepping inside the house before she could shut the door in his face.

Rose spun round and folded her arms. ‘We have nothing to say to one another, Nick.’

‘You’re not to leave the house dressed the way you were tonight.’ Where the hell had that come from?

‘You’re telling me what I can wear?’

‘For your own good.’ He flushed darkly and walked away from her incredulous expression, into the sitting room where he prowled restlessly before perching against the bay window so that he could look at her framed in the doorway.

‘For my own good?’

‘Stop parroting me,’ Nick said irritably. He failed to see why she would stare at him as though he had taken leave of his senses when, as far as he was concerned, he was being perfectly reasonable and pretty decent.

‘You may think you know what you’re letting yourself in for, but you don’t,’ he informed her bluntly, and Rose’s mouth fell open a fraction further. So it was fine for him to practically make love in front of an audience with a bimbo who seemed to have an allergy to fabric, but he still found it perfectly acceptable to lecture her about her dress code and her general code of behaviour.

She had never known anything so hypocritical in her life. She opened her mouth a few times to say something and instead succeeded in giving a goldfish impression.

‘Not only is it dangerous for you to dress like that because you’re giving off all the wrong signals, but you’re dressing for the wrong crowd anyway. Half the men there were gay and the other half would put Casanova to shame when it comes to scruples.’

‘And since you don’t fall into the gay category, Nick, we both know which one you belong to.’

‘We’re not talking about me.’

‘No, we’re talking about double standards. Maybe I’m in search of an unscrupulous man. Have you considered that? Maybe my Big Change involves taking a break from the safe guy and just seeing what the grass is like on the other side.’

‘You know you don’t mean that.’

‘Really?’ Rose fumbled in her bag and whipped out the business card on which Ted Splice had written his various numbers. She waved it in the air as if proving her point, as if one small piece of cardboard were actually a key to the gates of wildness, adventure and scandal. As if she would ever, in a million years, seriously consider dating a man whose nickname was Splice.

‘I didn’t tell you this, but Ted and I are going out…on a date…next Saturday to…’ She named the first restaurant that came into her head, which, unfortunately, was a cheap and cheerful pizza place not a hundred miles away from where she lived. ‘And who knows what might happen once we’ve finished eating?’

CHAPTER NINE

THE advantage to the cheap and cheerful pizza place lay in its size. It was vast and, at eight thirty on a Saturday evening, brimming with families.

Nick hadn’t intended to end up there. In fact, for the better part of the week he had told himself that he had more important things to do than to waste time on one highly infuriating woman. If, he piously concluded, she wanted to hurl herself into the party scene, then she could damn well live with the consequences, and consequences there most certainly would be. If she paraded her body with a type like movie producer Ted, then she might just as well have Available stamped across her forehead in large neon lettering.

Especially with this Ted character, about whom he had managed to source some information. The man had been in and out of rehab like a yo-yo, which was not exactly a notable event in the world he lived in, but Nick could not think of Rose seriously dating a guy like that. In fact, he had discovered that he couldn’t think of her seriously dating any guy without feeling ferociously possessive.

Possessive over a woman.

The notion, when it first trickled into his head, was so unbelievable that it bordered on amusing. He had never been a possessive man, had never been jealous, had prided himself on his controlled approach to relationships.

Six days down the line, there was nothing amusing about it. He thought of the man’s oily hands stripping Rose of her skimpy black dress, unhooking her bra, feasting his eyes on her big, beautiful breasts and felt sick.

He should never have allowed what they had to finish. That was the problem. Things that ended prematurely became unattainable objects of desire simply because basic need hadn’t been sated. He had thought himself in control of what they had and only now realised that what they had had been controlling him.

But still. Going to the pizza place had not been an option. He had just somehow found himself driving over there well before she and her date were due to arrive, found himself taking the quietest and least noticeable table at the very far corner of the room where he was half shielded by an oversized plastic plant in drastic need of dusting. He found himself doing all this and it was almost as if his head had no say in the matter.

The pizza he ordered for himself as he waited was surprisingly good. The wine slightly less so, but nevertheless drinkable.

By eight-thirty, when neither Rose nor her date had yet arrived, he was smugly contemplating the very satisfying theory that Ted the movie producer had stood her up. He imagined her sitting bleakly in her sitting room, wondering whether or not to text, knowing that this was the first nail in the coffin of her new lifestyle.

She might even, he thought with a kick of real pleasure, be glumly admitting to herself that he, Nick, had been right after all to warn her off the man.

This was such a pleasing fantasy that he almost missed them. Feeling a little ridiculous because of his cloak-and-dagger tactics, Nick watched them through the fronds of the plastic plant, watched them taken through to a table uncomfortably sandwiched between two families with exuberant kids.

She had steered away from wearing anything revealing, but, instead of finding this acceptable, he darkly decided that she looked even sexier in her short grey skirt, her too-short grey skirt and neatly tailored blouse. She could almost have been going out to work except for the two top buttons of her shirt, which were undone. Nick was pretty sure that if he noticed that little detail, then so did Ted the reformed producer. He couldn’t actually see the man’s face because Ted had his back to him, but it was easy to imagine those beady little eyes flicking rapaciously over her body while he tried to work out the fastest way of getting her into bed.

Nick tensed and he finished his glass of wine and signalled the waitress over so that he could order something else. Coffee and dessert, because now he was condemned to remain where he was or risk being seen on the way out.

Not that he had plans to leave until they did. He sat back and folded his hands on his stomach and watched.

Rose, sitting on the opposite side of the room, was glumly regretting the impulse that had led her to this place.

She had reacted to Nick’s horrible, patronising attitude towards her a week ago by fabricating a non-existent date with a man who had been flattering and pleasant enough for a couple of hours but several thousand light years away from someone she would ever have considered going out with.

In fact, there had been no need for her to telephone Ted at all, but she had been prompted into doing so for all the wrong reasons. Hurt at seeing Nick with another woman, anger that he should dare tell her how to live her life having done such a comprehensive job of ruining it, and a stubborn feeling that if he warned her against Ted, then she would damn well go out with him because the last thing she needed was Nick Papaeliou’s misguided good intentions.

She had been tormented by the thought that he and his leggy redhead had probably chuckled at the silly little woman in the short black dress who was clueless to the ways of the world. That, as much as anything else, had driven her to pick the phone up and dial one of the several numbers Ted had left with her.

She had said she would be going to Angelo’s Pizza Emporium with Ted Splice and she would go to Angelo’s Pizza Emporium with him if only to prove a point to herself. That she was a free woman, liberated from the chains of fear that had kept her anchored all her life. Nick, she had decided as she had got dressed earlier, making sure to wear clothes that wouldn’t give Ted the wrong impression, might well turn out to be just the first in a long line of many.

She had been tempted to telephone Lily on the other side of the world and inform her of this new departure, a whole brand-new set of moral codes, but Lily had failed to show the appropriate disgust at Nick’s high-handed behaviour at the party and had just laughed when accused of not coming to her rescue. She had departed for America still clinging to the belief that everything was going to be fine, just wait and see.

Now, sitting in the pizza emporium, which was truly an emporium and one that seemed unnaturally full of rowdy children, Rose was in danger, not of dodging Ted’s wandering hands, but of nodding off through boredom.

Ted was not only very, very fond of the sound of his own voice and enchanted with all the funny stories he had up his sleeve, but he had also confided, on the way over in the taxi, lowering his voice, as if the cab driver could care less, that his inclinations were not entirely of the straight variety.

Of course, he adored women, but…

Rose had nodded and resigned herself to an evening of listening to Ted’s anecdotes and looking at her watch.

At least the place was big so that they could manage to avoid a falsely intimate setting, and once or twice, as she nibbled at her pizza and salad, she actually found herself laughing at some of the wild things he had to say.

Apparently he found her cool and refreshing because she was such a good listener.

‘If you were a guy,’ he paid the highest compliment, ‘then I’d be wining and dining you and inviting you back to my place to…’

‘Look at your etchings?’

Which brought them right back to square one, the main subject for the evening, Ted himself, and his trials and tribulations as an artist before he had discovered his true calling behind the lens of a camera.

It was a little after ten by the time Ted asked for the bill.

‘Been a bit of a waste for you, hasn’t it?’ he said sheepishly. ‘I should have let you know…told you where my preferences lay…’

Rose laughed and impulsively reached across the table and held both his hands in hers. ‘I just don’t understand why you don’t come out of the closet. It’s the twenty-first century, after all, and you work in a world where it’s pretty much the norm, anyway.’

‘Oh, it’s my mum, babe. Don’t think she’d be too hip to the idea and, well…she’s getting on a bit…Gotta play the respect card, man, gotta play the respect card.’

‘Well, if this helps at all, I was playing a part that night as well.’

‘You mean…’

‘Oh, no! Not that.’ Rose threw back her head and laughed, then she leaned forward and whispered confidentially, ‘I’m actually a closet introvert. But last Saturday, I dressed to impress and played the part.’

‘Well, now we know each other’s wicked secrets, I think we’re going to be friends for life.’

It was turning out to be an okay evening after all, Rose considered as they stood up, and when he slipped his arm around her waist she was quite happy to nestle against him and not at all offended when they parted company on the pavement outside, after promising that they would meet up again, maybe in a couple of months time, because Ted’s schedule was ‘like hectic, man’.

She washed her face, kicked off the high shoes and changed into her very un-wild gear of grey track-suit jogging bottoms and a sloppy tee shirt with a faded picture of Minnie Mouse on the front.

Heartbreak had, at least, had one good side effect. Her eating habits had changed. She had lost her appetite and it had conveniently failed to return so as she sat down to finish what remained of the evening in front of a bowl of carrot sticks and some low-fat dip she rested safe in the knowledge that the pizza was not going to be accompanied by a great slab of comfort-eating chocolate.

It took her fifteen minutes of surfing the channels before she landed on one that was watchable.

It would pass the rest of the evening, she supposed. No point heading up to bed because she knew that she would be unable to sleep. It had been the same for ages. She would close her eyes, will herself to think of something mundane, like what Annie at work had done with the reports she had laboriously redone three days ago, or what would be the next stage in her programming to update the Accounts Receivables department, and then she would think of him.

He sprang into her head like sweet temptation and forbidden fruit wrapped up in one agonisingly dangerous package. And he would always be laughing at her. Mostly, he would be laughing at her while rolling around in the bed with the redhead.

She was sipping some of the green tea with lemon that she had made to drink with her carrots and dip when the doorbell rang. She consulted her watch and frowned—nearly eleven-thirty on a Saturday evening.

Much as she had ended up enjoying her evening out with Ted, she hoped it wasn’t him. She was certain that she would see him again because, as she wryly acknowledged, he enjoyed talking and in the field in which he worked so did nearly everyone else, she suspected, so a good listener was a valuable find. He had also shared a major confidence with her and that, in itself, would be a strong bond between them. All very nice, but she was looking forward to an hour or so of mindless television, drifting in and out of thoughts of Nick.

She tried to wipe the disgruntled expression from her face as she went to open the front door. She was pretty much prepared to give Ted one cup of coffee, but really nothing else. His urge to confide would have to wait for a more convenient hour.

But when she pulled open the door, it wasn’t Ted hovering on her doorstep. It was Nick. Rose was so startled that she remained speechless for a few heart-stopping seconds. It seemed that he made a habit of appearing on her doorstep and sending her into a state of paralysing confusion.

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded coldly. ‘You can’t keep just turning up on my doorstep, Nick.’

‘Are you going to invite me in?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I have better things to do than talk to you.’

‘Aren’t you dressed in the wrong clothes for the better things you have in mind?’ Wrong approach. This wasn’t how things were meant to develop, not that he knew quite how things were meant to develop. He had just known, when he had seen them walking out of the restaurant, wrapped around each other like a couple on the way to the altar, that he had to do something. He couldn’t just turn his back and walk away because he would be haunted by her for the rest of his life and that was a consequence he had no intention of accepting. He needed to get her out of his system and he wasn’t going to achieve that by antagonising her.

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Rose informed him, her voice cooling by several degrees. ‘And I don’t like your attitude.’

‘I apologise.’

‘What?’

‘I apologise. I can see your point of view. I show up here, uninvited and unannounced, without so much as a bunch of flowers or a box of chocolates…’

Rose felt the colour crawl into her skin. She didn’t know what was going on but there was a lazy warmth in his eyes that made her shiver with a horrible excitement, which she tried valiantly to slap down.

‘What’s going on, Nick? Why would you bring me flowers or chocolate?’

‘Let me in, Rose. Give me a chance to explain.’ It was an effort keeping his voice smooth and even and controlled because his only thought was that Ted the reformed producer was lurking somewhere inside her house, probably in her bedroom. True, women on the threshold of a rampant affair didn’t usually deck themselves out in track suit bottoms and what looked like an ancient tee shirt from when she was a kid, but who was he to tell? The woman was a law unto herself.

Poor, hapless Ted wouldn’t have known what he was letting himself in for when he decided to make a play for her. He would have been expecting a sexy version of the bimbos who littered the movie world. Rose must have come as a nasty surprise. Nick was tempted to smirk at the thought, but he contained himself and did his utmost to look penitent.

Rose, conversely, was looking back at him with deep, unhidden suspicion.

‘It’s late.’

‘I know and I’m sorry about that.’

‘Stop apologising, Nick. It doesn’t suit you.’

Nick shot her a winning smile. ‘You’re right. It doesn’t. Let me come in?’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ She swung open the door and he walked past her into the hallway and then turned around so that he could subject her to another of those sexy smiles that made her head spin.

‘Go and sit in the lounge and I’ll bring you some coffee,’ she said, just to get rid of him while she gathered her composure in privacy somewhere.

Flowers? Chocolate? She had no idea what he was playing at, but it had sent her into a tailspin. Even as she bustled around in the small kitchen, making him his mug of coffee, she was acutely aware of him sitting in her lounge, just a matter of a few metres away. Whatever he was up to, she thought firmly, she was having none of it. She reminded herself that he had a girlfriend. A bright, sparkling, picture-perfect model with limited vocabulary. Just the kind of woman he was inevitably drawn to, never mind his brief diversion with her. And anyway, she was a free and liberated young woman now, no longer hiding behind routine and safety to protect her from the big, bad world.

She found him obediently sitting where she had told him to sit, doing nothing more offensive than flicking through one of the computer magazines she liked to read occasionally, just to make sure that she was keeping in touch with the latest technology. He closed it as soon as she entered the room and handed him the coffee.

‘Interesting reading material,’ he commented. Well, at least the rehabilitated producer was not on the premises. Either that or he didn’t mind going into hiding for an indefinite period of time.

‘Why have you come?’

‘How did your date go?’

‘As you can see, I’m sitting here in one piece so your fears about Ted were misplaced.’ And little do you know by how much, Rose thought wryly. ‘Is that why you came? Your over-developed sense of duty kicking in again? Compelled to make sure that I wasn’t cruelly taken advantage of and left sobbing somewhere on my own?’

‘No.’

Rose felt confused once again. ‘Then why?’

‘I…I’m not very good at admitting things like this, but I didn’t like seeing you with other men last week at that party.’

She held onto her common sense as tightly as she could and remembered the vital truth, which was that this man was not interested in a proper relationship with her or anyone else for that matter. Which brought her neatly to the redhead.

‘I’m surprised you even noticed me, Nick. Wasn’t your attention on your date?’

‘You know it wasn’t,’ Nick said huskily.

‘You mean you brought a woman to Lily’s party when you weren’t even interested in her?’

‘So it would appear.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I thought she might be able to make me forget that I’m still attracted to you. It didn’t work.’ Nick rested his mug on the table in front of him and strolled over to the sofa where Rose was curled at one end with her feet tucked under her. ‘Because I am—still attracted to you. Believe me, I don’t want to be, but I can’t help myself.’ He decided he would keep the little mortifying fact that he had spent the evening spying on her to himself. Confession might be good for the soul but total cleansing was downright stupidity.

‘Have you missed me?’ he asked roughly.

‘I…This is mad…’

‘Have you? I’ve been going crazy thinking about you, Rose. Ever since last weekend, I’ve been going even crazier thinking about you and another man.’ He took her hand in his, stroked her palm with his finger and then, devastatingly, kissed the soft, tender flesh.

It was like being burnt and Rose gasped and half closed her eyes.

This was all wrong. Playing the field was one thing when it was a journey of discovery. Playing the field with this man was no journey of discovery. She had discovered way too much on this particular journey.

But when he was leaning over her like this…telling her all this stuff…opening up and whispering how much he had missed her…

She let him scoop her legs onto his lap, knowing that she should be pulling away. The redhead, he was telling her now, had barely impacted on him. In fact he hadn’t contacted her since the party and hadn’t slept with her. She didn’t turn him on. Not as she, Rose, did. Music to her ears.

‘I’ve dreamt about your body, Rose…your ripe, sexy body. I’ve dreamt about your breasts…’

In response to that, Rose felt her breasts harden, disobeying all the strict rules she was laying down in her head about sticking to her guns.

‘Will you let me touch them?’

‘No,’ she said weakly.

‘Things didn’t end between us, Rose, and you know it as well as I do.’

‘It wouldn’t work, Nick.’

‘Sex between us can’t fail to work.’

‘That’s not what I’m talking about.’

She tried to wriggle her legs into a more dignified position, a position more in keeping with a woman in control of her own mind and body. However, her legs had turned to jelly. Worse, they were obeying someone else’s commands, and when he ran his hand lightly along her inner thigh they fell apart, willing slaves to whatever he wanted to do.

‘You tell me that you’re breaking away from the shackles that kept you locked up…’ His voice was low and seductive and his hands were now doing even more inappropriate things, slipping under the elasticated waistband of her jogging bottoms, easing them lower so that he could caress her stomach. ‘Break away with me, Rose.’

‘You should go.’

‘If you said it like you meant it, then I would.’ His hand left her stomach to explore upwards now, until he was cupping her breast. No bra. This was his very own wet dream. ‘But you don’t want me to…’ He touched the tip of her nipple, which was hard, and felt her sharp release of breath. ‘You want me to do this…Do you want me to do more? Do you want me to suck those big, rosy nipples?’ He flicked up the baggy tee shirt and this time it was his turn to inhale as he saw the vision that had been playing in his head ever since they had last made love.

‘No…yes…no…I don’t know…’

He did know. He recalled how much she loved him playing with her breasts and he began to suckle one of the rosy circles, loving the taste of her and hungry for more, like a starving man suddenly sitting at a banquet. As he sucked and pulled her nipple into his mouth his tongue flicked and darted over the sensitised tip, sending her into wild throes of abandon.

Somehow their bodies moved in harmony with one another, until she was sitting up, with her head flung back and Nick positioned kneeling between her legs so that he could lavish all his attention on her breasts.

He licked his way down and pulled down the jogging bottoms along with her underwear in one smooth, swift movement.

With his fingers, he parted the delicate folds of her and inserted his tongue, wriggling it towards the honeyed sweetness of the little bud that throbbed and begged for satisfaction.

And Rose accordingly groaned and lifted her hips off the sofa, tensing every muscle in her body as his questing tongue flicked and teased and his mouth tasted every inch of her most private parts.

She reached down to try and push him away and reclaim some of her will-power, and felt her fingers curl in his dark hair, urging him to bring her to completion right here, right now.

But Nick needed more than that and he couldn’t wait. He was barely aware of taking off his clothes until he was standing in front of her, big and proud. Rose opened her eyes drowsily and smiled before reaching out and taking his throbbing member in her hand, where she proceeded to give it the same attention that he had given her.

Yes, she had missed this too. Missed him and missed touching him, missed the way her hands and mouth could turn this impressive, powerful man to putty.

By the time he drove into her, they were both so close to coming that it just took a few deep, urgent thrusts to send them tipping over the edge.

Rose recovered to the dull, depressing knowledge that she had made the same mistake. She had allowed her body to do what it wanted to while her brain trailed along somewhere far behind, raising its weedy objections.

The sofa felt cramped and uncomfortable. ‘I need to go and get cleaned up,’ she said, and Nick, catching onto the tone of her voice and hearing the shutters begin to slide into place, turned to her and frowned.

‘You’re not regretting what we just did, are you?’

‘We’re back to square one, Nick.’

‘We need one another.’ She was making to stand up and he yanked her back down so that she fell onto his lap where he could easily keep her prisoner. ‘You didn’t hear what I said, Rose. I missed you. I missed you from the minute we parted company at the airport and I haven’t stopped.’

‘Which is why you felt the need to replace me.’

‘I told you, I thought I needed distraction. I was wrong. I need you. I need this. And so do you. You can say whatever you want, Rose, but your sweet, sexy body tells another story.’

‘It tells a different story. I want you, and, yes, I was weak, but I want more than just sex.’

‘Then come live with me.’ Nick uttered the words, but they failed to evoke the horror he might have expected. He had never lived with a woman in his life before, but right now it didn’t seem such an outlandish proposition.

To Rose, his proposal, noble though it was, especially for a man like him, was a halfway measure driven by lust. Love would have demanded a proposal of quite a different nature. Nick wanted her, but he also wanted to keep his options open. Boredom, for him, was lurking just around the corner and he was canny enough to realise that dumping a wife was completely different from dumping a live-in lover.

And, Lord, it was tempting. Tempting to think of having this bliss, but the inevitable rider of ‘for however long it lasted’ was too much of a threat to her peace of mind.

‘No.’

‘What do you mean no?’ Nick looked at her in stunned surprise. He wasn’t even aware of her standing up and sticking on her clothes. ‘What do you mean no? Have you any idea what sort of a leap a commitment like that takes for a man like me? To have a woman share my space?’

‘And I appreciate it…’

‘But you really want marriage.’ He was incredulous. He had just offered her something beyond the reach of every other woman he had ever known and she wanted more.

‘I really do.’ Rose took a deep breath and decided that there was no point playing any more games. She sat on the side of the sofa and looked at him carefully. ‘You told me that you never wanted to carry on wanting me. Well, Nick…’ she shot him a rueful smile ‘…I never wanted to fall in love with you, but I did. That’s why I want to marry you. You tell me that we’re sexually compatible. I tell you that we’re compatible in far more ways than that. I tell you that we have what it takes. So…will you marry me?’ Rose could actually feel the hammering of her heart. If someone had asked her to do a bungee jump off the Clifton Suspension Bridge, she couldn’t have felt more terrified than she did at this very moment, but what was the use trying to keep the truth to herself any longer? Pride and dignity was all well and good, but if she walked away without telling him how she really felt it would haunt her for the rest of her life. She would always wonder what if, and ‘what if’s were too closely related to ‘if only’s for her liking.

Nick looked at her, aghast.

Love? Marriage? He couldn’t contemplate it. Freedom of movement was so deeply ingrained in him that the thought of relinquishing it was unthinkable.

And, anyway, since when did women do the proposing?

He felt a surge of anger that she just hadn’t been able to accept his already extreme sacrifice of moving in with him.

‘Don’t worry answering,’ Rose said neutrally. She stood up and walked towards the door. ‘Your answer’s written on your face.’ Now, she couldn’t look at him, so instead she stared out into the hallway, hearing him get dressed and then feeling him move towards her.

‘I’m not the marrying type of man. You always knew that, Rose. Why couldn’t you have just accepted the parameters and appreciated the fact that I asked you to live with me? It’s as good as…’

Rose took a deep breath and looked at him. She had her arms folded and she could feel her fingernails pressing painfully into her forearms. If they weren’t she was sure that she would be shaking like a leaf. ‘Because,’ she said calmly, and where that dreadful calm came from she had no idea, ‘marriage is all about commitment. Real commitment. Not just the “yes, let’s stay together while the going’s good” variety.’

‘My commitment’s always been to my work,’ Nick told her baldly. ‘You’re the closest I have ever come to sharing myself with another human being, but marriage…’

‘Just one step too far?’ Rose laughed mirthlessly and walked towards the front door.

There was a flat, cold feeling inside her, but, strangely, she was still glad that she had said what she had said, given it her best shot, so to speak. She didn’t think he would be back now. In his mind, he would have opened a Pandora’s box and, having slammed the lid back shut, he would never make the mistake of reopening it.

‘We could have had fun.’ His voice was cold and accusatory.

Rose shrugged and opened the door. ‘Have a good life, Nick.’

She didn’t watch him leave. Instead she closed the door quietly and leaned against it. She could hear the deep revving of his car as he pulled away from the kerb and then the sound of the engine was replaced by silence and she made her way up the stairs, into the bathroom, so that she could have a shower.

When she lay in bed, she replayed in her head this last night spent together. Before, even in the aftermath of Borneo and thinking that things were finally over for good, there had been, she realised now, an element of hope and a certain restless dissatisfaction. Now, there was closure. It made her neither happy nor unhappy. She just felt dead inside.

Life would carry on and it did. On the surface, Rose functioned as she always had. Competent and reliable at work, sociable enough with her circle of friends.

Breaking out of the mould was well and truly abandoned. The only surprise was her sister’s reaction. Lily was disproportionately upset at the turn of events and that touched Rose.

‘You’ll get over it, Lily,’ she laughed wryly down the phone. ‘And so will I. In a year’s time, we’ll both see this as just another experience in the great adventure that is life.’ She couldn’t stand the thought that the damage done was irreparable. Surely not. Broken hearts mended, didn’t they? Every magazine assured her of that.

But six weeks down the road, and Rose still found it hard to find a way through the dense fog of misery. She felt like a robot, going through the motions while underneath everything wilted and shrivelled away and died.

She had no idea what Nick was doing and she avoided buying any tabloids just in case she was tempted to open up those scurrilous gossip pages where she might see a picture of him cavorting with another redhead, mark two. Mark one might have been a distraction, but mark two would certainly have been the truly-narrow-escape replacement.

In the midst of this never-ending battle with her torn emotions and the sheer effort needed to carry on going to work, socialising with friends and pretending that all was well in the world of Rose Taylor, the dawning realisation that something else was very wrong took a little while to filter through.

When it did, the fragile glue that was binding her daily life together dissolved like wax in a flame and the truly sickening question reared its ugly head.

What on earth was she to do now?

CHAPTER TEN

ROSE was on her way up to see him. Right now. At three in the afternoon. Right here. In his office.

Nick had no idea what she wanted. It had been nearly two months since he had set eyes on her and he had daily told himself that her disappearance from his life was the best thing that could have happened. He told himself that he had offered her the unthinkable and she had turned him down, proving his theory that women, each and every one of them, were out to change the men they purported to care about.

He had replayed countless times in his head that moment when she had told him that she was in love with him. If she were in love with him, he thought, why couldn’t she have accepted what he had offered?

Because her aim had been to turn him into the domesticated animal that he was not and never would be.

It was a source of constant and relentless frustration that he still couldn’t dismiss her from his head, where she had taken up residence and refused to budge.

He knew that his work was being affected. Not his ability to work, which was part and parcel of the essence of him, but his demeanour at work.

More than once he had been tempted to call her, but he hadn’t and he never would. Pride would never allow him to pick up that phone and dial her number.

But, and this was the thought that haunted him late at night when there was nothing to distract him, he longed for her. He wanted her loving him. He missed her. And he didn’t know why.

Now his secretary had buzzed up that there was a certain Rose Taylor in reception, asking if she could come up and see him, and for the first time in weeks Nick felt a curious sense of peace. He immediately told his secretary that he was busy, that she might have to wait for half an hour while he wrapped up his conference call, but that he could squeeze her in after that.

Okay, it was childish of him, but she had always managed to turn him into a kid.

Then he sat back in his massive black leather chair, swivelled it to face the floor-to-ceiling plates of glass that overlooked the city of London, and turned his mind to what she wanted.

It could only be one thing. She had had ample time to think about his proposal and she had come to her senses. Nick contemplated the idea with intense satisfaction. He would even be tempted to say that he felt elated. He would have her back in his life, would have her sharp wit and clever mind and sexy body, and there would be no more talk about trying to infiltrate his life by putting a ring on his finger.

She loved him. Of course she would return. It was to be expected and Nick felt warm with the anticipation of having her back. Course, he would have to make it clear that his views hadn’t changed. That a mistress was a far cry from a wife and matrimony was not on the agenda, but he didn’t anticipate a problem.

After forty minutes, he buzzed through to his secretary to tell her that she could send Rose up now, and then he relaxed back, facing the heavy door to his office, and waited for her to enter.

‘You’ve lost weight,’ were his opening words as Rose cautiously entered his office and shut the door behind her.

She had prepared herself for this, but all her hours of preparation now flew out the window as she looked at him, despairingly aware that he still had as much of an effect on her now as he had the last time she had seen him. So much for time and its great healing properties.

Not wanting to leave the door because it represented her fastest route out, Rose remained hovering where she was, not quite sure how to answer his frowning observation, until he told her to have a seat. He actually stood up, pointed to the chair facing his and then proceeded to perch on the side of the desk so that she was forced to sidle forwards and sit at an awkward angle to avoid contact with his thigh.

‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘Haven’t you been eating?’

‘I haven’t come here to talk about my diet, Nick,’ Rose answered irritably. She was aware that she was fiddling with the hem of her skirt and made herself stop. Nervous gesture. But she had a lot to be nervous about. In fact, she had spent the past two weeks in a state of near panic. Ever since she had clocked that she had missed a period. Ever since she had gone to the chemist’s and bought one of those home pregnancy kits that were virtually one-hundred-per-cent accurate, leaving no doubt that she was well and truly pregnant with Nick’s baby. That last time—no contraception. It had been wild and spontaneous and, unlike the very first time they had made love when they had omitted to use contraception, she hadn’t been in her safe period.

And, yes, she had lost weight. She hadn’t been eating properly and although, standing naked in front of the mirror, she could see that her stomach was more rounded, everywhere else was skinny in comparison to the curvy woman she had been. Who needed diets to lose weight? A healthy dose of misery worked a treat.

Not that she would look thinner for much longer.

She closed her eyes and felt suddenly dizzy. It was a good thing that she was sitting down. Collapsing on his office floor would have been a very disadvantageous way to begin proceedings.

‘What’s the matter?’ Nick frowned because for a minute there he had actually thought that she was going to faint. Something kicked hard inside him, some inarticulate fear that she was ill. He removed himself back to his chair and tried to get himself together, because once that thought had inserted itself in his head it began to eat away at his logic, burrowing away until he was consumed with the conviction that there was something ominous that she was keeping from him.

For the first time since she had been announced, Nick entertained the possibility that she might not have come to his office because she wanted to engineer a reconciliation.

He had been on a high, anticipating her stammering admission that she couldn’t keep away from him. He had even begun playing with thoughts of how the rest of his day would pan out. At his place. Uninterrupted sex. Touching her, feeling her, enjoying the things she could do to his body and all the myriad things he could do to hers.

But, now she was sitting in front of him, he could see that she was pale. This was not the demeanour of a woman looking forward to embarking on a heady and fulfilling sexual relationship with a man.

In fact, this was the demeanour of a woman who was nervous about blurting out an uncomfortable truth. Nick, astute when it came to reading other people, felt something shift inside him. He was scared, terrified in fact.

Everything seemed to slow down and he became uncomfortably aware that he had broken out in nervous perspiration. He could barely ask the question he knew he had to.

‘Would you like something to drink? Tea? Coffee? I could ask my secretary to bring you some…’

Just the thought of tea or coffee made Rose feel nauseous. She went a couple of shades paler and shook her head.

‘I won’t be long, Nick,’ she said, clearing her throat and making an effort not to be pathetic.

‘No rush. Mind if I have a cup of coffee?’ He buzzed through to his secretary to bring him in a cappuccino and Rose smiled wanly at him.

‘Since when do you ask permission for anything, Nick?’

Since he wanted to buy some time before he heard what she had to say?

He was increasingly convinced that there was something seriously wrong with her. She looked terrible. As white as a sheet. And not because she was nervous, even though she clearly was. No, there was something underlyingly wrong, and as something close to terror continued to eat away at him Nick realised, in a moment of truth, what he had been missing all along.

He had let his own stubborn pride dictate his life. Nick Papaeliou, the man who could have any woman he desired, who had lived his life taking his pick and telling himself that his freedom was the most important thing he possessed, had clung to his vow never to commit like an idiot clinging to a lifebelt in a bath. No woman had ever been able to tempt him out of his conviction that bachelordom was the only way to go and so, when Rose had come along, he had steadfastly ignored all the glaring signs that had gradually begun to clutter his life.

He had mistaken his missing her when she wasn’t around as missing her body. He had longed for her and explained it away as just a normal red-blooded-male reaction to craving a woman who turned him on. And when he had offered her the epitome of commitment as far as he was concerned, the chance to share his house with him, he had blithely assumed that the gesture signified no more than a desire to have what he wanted on tap until he became bored, until they both became bored.

Women had always eventually bored him and the fact that Rose was not included in that category had been so obvious from the start and yet so easy to ignore.

He could have kicked himself.

She had told him that she loved him and what had he done? Asked her to prove it by doing the one thing she didn’t want to do: move in with him.

And now here she was and it sure as hell wasn’t to set that particular little situation right.

She was here to tell him…what?

That she was ill. Thinking about that possibility made him feel instantly sick when his cappuccino was brought in and placed on the desk in front of him.

She was trying hard to be brave and meet his eyes, but she physically couldn’t. He could see that and it terrified him.

‘I can’t have this conversation with you in my office,’ he told her abruptly, and that, at least, made her raise her eyes and look at him.

‘But you don’t know what I’m going to say.’

‘I know it’s serious, whatever it is.’ He pushed the coffee away from him and stood up.

Rose failed to follow suit. Instead she watched as he slung on his jacket, her fists pressed into her lap.

‘I don’t want to go anywhere, Nick. I want to say what I have to say here. Where it’s impersonal…’

Nick shot her a brooding, sideways glance and hesitated before removing his jacket and carefully replacing it on its hanger. Then he walked towards the window and stared down at the city streets below, trying to get his thoughts in order, filled with a cold, clawing panic and the painful knowledge that he had to say what he had to say before she unleashed whatever truth it was she had come to impart to him.

He could feel her eyes on him and, sure enough, he turned around to find her watching him.

‘Look,’ he began, ‘I’m…I don’t know how to say this…’ He raked his fingers through his hair and shook his head, suddenly restless and uncomfortable. ‘I’ve never said this to anyone before…’

Rose, having screwed up every ounce of courage she possessed to tell him what she had to and as quickly as possible, breathed a silent sigh of relief that he was doing the talking. Okay, it was just a case of putting off the inevitable and it was cowardly, but she relaxed just a tiny bit.

She was also curious, even though she didn’t want to be. She hadn’t come to his office expecting to have a conversation, or at least not until she had told him about the pregnancy and then conversation probably wouldn’t quite describe what she imagined would follow. Recriminations, accusation, bitterness—nothing that she would classify as conversation.

‘Said what?’ she asked, bewildered.

Even more bewildering was the expression on his face. Gone was the easy self-assurance she associated with him. In its place was uncertainty and hesitation, which was as perplexing as the dark flush that stained his cheeks.

She almost forgot what she had come to say when he walked towards her and dragged his chair round so that he could position himself right next to her, on her level.

‘I…’ he began. ‘I…I’m glad you’re here…’

He didn’t look glad. In fact, he didn’t look anything, at least not anything she could identify. And if he really was glad, then she was pretty sure that it wasn’t a sentiment he would be harbouring for very long.

‘I…the past few weeks, Rose…’ He once again ran his fingers through his hair and looked away from her. ‘Not good.’

In a flash, she knew where he was going. He had probably assumed that she had come to his office with a view to taking him up on his offer for her to live with him and was now, against the dictates of his pride, going to repeat the offer because he still wanted her. Want, want, want! The most distasteful and egotistical word in the universe.

She closed her mind off to her memories of him. It gave her strength to think that this man, whatever he said, hadn’t wanted her enough to take their relationship that one important step further. She had declared her love and that, psychologically, must have led him to assume that she would return, grateful for the crumbs he could throw her.

‘I’m not here to talk about that,’ she interjected quickly.

‘You don’t understand, Rose. I need to talk about it. I need to talk about what a fool I’ve been.’ He reached out and took hold of her fingers, idly playing with them, obviously, she thought, unaware of what that simple, inoffensive gesture was doing to her insides. She stared, fascinated and dry-mouthed, at his long brown fingers as they fiddled with hers, and gulped.

It was amazing that he couldn’t guess the reason for her visit. Astute as he was, his mind was obviously not programmed to think the unthinkable.

‘I let you go,’ he said quietly, looking directly at her. ‘I let the woman who loved me go.’

Rose didn’t want to be reminded of that. ‘I’m not here to blame you, Nick. You did what you had to do and there are no hard feelings. I haven’t come to discuss the past.’ She made an effort to slide her hand out of his grasp but his fingers tightened on hers, clasping them into submission.

‘I’ve always thought that love was a complication, something of which I had no need. I enjoyed women but I didn’t want them clambering into my private life and interfering with it. My goals were set and there was no place for cosy nights in and joint holidays in Italy with the eventual two point two.’

Which snapped Rose back to the present like a bucket of cold water.

‘No. I gathered,’ she said coolly.

‘I was…mistaken…’

It took a couple of seconds for his words to sink in, then her thoughts were adrift, bobbing about in confusion as she tried to assimilate that telling, wrenched remark.

‘I…beg your pardon?’

‘I was mistaken,’ Nick said simply. He felt a weight lift off his chest. Whatever dire news she had come to break, then she would know how he felt and it was something he should have said a long time ago. Courage, he was discovering, was something he had measured using all the wrong tools. Courage was this. Telling the only woman he had ever loved that he loved her.

Rose wasn’t sure what she was hearing. She knew what she wanted to hear.

‘You’re playing games,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Please.’ This time she succeeded in withdrawing her hand, which she held up because, riveting though his disclosures were, she couldn’t trust herself not to start believing them, and hadn’t he already made it perfectly clear that he was not in the business of love? What would he do to get her back into his bed? she wondered. Seduce her with words he knew she wanted to hear?

No. She would say what she had come to say and watch him fall back in horror. Better that than to be lulled into a false sense of security that would be snatched away the minute she broke her news.

‘Just listen to me and stop…confusing me.’

Nick had the cold feeling that he had left things too late. The horse had bolted and, not only had he failed to realise what a treasure he possessed, but he had closed the stable door and returned to the house whistling a merry tune. He deserved to have her walk out on him and never look back. His punishment would be to spend the rest of his life living with his mistake.

‘I…’ Now it was her turn to stammer. She took a deep breath and said in one quick rush, closing her eyes to block him out, ‘I’m pregnant. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it has. You don’t have to feel responsible. You don’t have to feel anything. I came here because I felt you ought to know, not because I wanted anything from you. You’re telling me now about mistakes, but I know you for who you are. I don’t want money from you; I don’t want time from you. I just thought…you should know…’

In a minute she would do the brave thing and open her eyes. The silence lengthened around them and into it she read an assortment of reactions. Eventually, though, she peeped at him and then opened her eyes fully when she realised that he hadn’t drawn back in horror.

‘You’re pregnant?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Rose whispered.

‘You’re pregnant.’

‘I realise this is the last thing you want…’

‘I don’t believe it.’ Nick shook his head in wonderment. It had never occurred to him. How naïve was he? He had lurched from thinking that she had returned because she wanted him, to imagining the worst, that she was ill, perhaps fatally so. But she was carrying his child and he was overwhelmed with a sudden feeling of elation.

He looked at her and grinned.

‘You’re…not upset?’ she asked cautiously.

‘You’re having my baby…’ He wanted to sweep her off her feet and swing her around. ‘I love you, Rose. I love you, I can’t live without you and now you’ve given me the best news I could ever have hoped for. Lord, when you walked through that door, with that serious expression, white like a ghost, I thought…I don’t know what I thought…that you were going to tell me that you were ill…that I had lost my chance to show you how much you mean to me…’

Rose’s brain had registered his declaration of love and had stuck there.

‘If you loved me, why didn’t you say something sooner?’

‘Because I didn’t understand myself.’ Nick smiled wryly at her. ‘You crept up on me and took over my soul and, like an idiot, I still thought that I was in control. When I heard that you had come here, my world fell into place again.’

‘And what if I hadn’t come here?’ Rose was not going to allow hope to push her headlong over the precipice. ‘Would you have let me disappear?’

‘I could never have done that.’ Nick thought about it, thought about his pride, realised that it would have lasted so long and then he would have woken up to the fact that he couldn’t live without her. And he wasn’t too proud, now, to tell her that and to delight in seeing her wariness finally melt away.

‘And now I’m going to be a father…’ God, he felt choked up. ‘Let’s get out of here. I want to celebrate and then I want us to get married.’

‘What, today?’ Rose laughed.

‘By the end of the week,’ Nick growled. ‘You need looking after and the sooner I get started, the better…’

Greek Mavericks: Winning the Enigmatic Greek

The Pregnant Kavakos Bride

Sharon Kendrick

The Greek’s Pregnant Bride

Michelle Smart

Bought for Her Innocence

Tara Pammi

www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Pregnant Kavakos Bride

Sharon Kendrick

Hired by the Greek billionaire…

Shipping magnate Ariston Kavakos expects stunning blonde Keeley Turner to be just like her gold-digging mother. So the only way to keep her away from his brother is to make her a proposition himself: a month’s employment—at his beck and call—on his private island…

Her family’s finances in dire straits, Keeley reluctantly accepts Ariston’s offer. Soon her resistance to his smoldering good looks, and their sizzling chemistry, weakens! But their spectacular night together has an unforeseen consequence, and Ariston makes one thing clear: he won’t rest until Keeley becomes his bride…

For the ever-amusing Amelia Tuttiett, who is

a brilliant ceramicist and an inspirational teacher.

CHAPTER ONE

SHE WAS EVERYTHING he hated about a woman and she was talking to his brother. Ariston Kavakos grew very still as he stared at her. At curves guaranteed to make a man desire her whether he wanted to or not. And he most definitely did not. Yet his body was stubbornly refusing to obey the dictates of his mind and a powerful shaft of lust arrowed straight to his groin.

Who the hell had invited Keeley Turner?

She was standing close to Pavlos, her blonde hair rippling beneath the overhead lights of the swish London art gallery. She lifted her hand as if to emphasise a point and Ariston found his gaze drawn to the most amazing breasts he had ever seen. He swallowed as he remembered her in a dripping wet bikini with rivulets of water trickling down over her belly as she emerged from the foamy blue waters of the Aegean. She was memory and fantasy all mixed up in one. Something started and never finished. Eight years on and Keeley Turner made him want to look at her and only her, despite the stunning photographs of his private Greek island which dominated the walls of the London gallery.

Was his brother similarly smitten? He hoped not, although it was hard to tell because their body language excluded the rest of the world as they stood deep in conversation. Ariston began to walk across the gallery but if they noticed him approach they chose not to acknowledge it. He felt a flicker of rage, which he quickly cast aside because rage could be counterproductive. He knew that now. Icy calm was far more effective in dealing with difficult situations and it had been the key to his success. The means by which he had dragged his family’s ailing company out of the dust and built it anew and gained a reputation of being the man with the Midas touch. The dissolute reign of his father was over and his elder son was now firmly in charge. These days the Kavakos shipping business was the most profitable on the planet and he intended to keep it that way.

His mouth hardened. Which meant more than just dealing with shipbrokers and being up to speed with the state of world politics. It meant keeping an eye on the more gullible members of the family. Because there was a lot of money sloshing around the Kavakos empire and he knew how women acted around money. An early lesson in feminine greed had changed his life for ever and that was why he never took his eye off the ball. His attitude meant that some people considered him controlling, but Ariston preferred to think of himself as a guiding influence—like a captain steering a ship. And in a way, life was like being at sea. You steered clear of icebergs for obvious reasons and women were like icebergs. You only ever saw ten per cent of what they were really like—the rest was buried deep beneath the self-serving and grasping surface.

His eyes didn’t leave the blonde as he walked towards them, knowing that if she was going to be a problem in his brother’s life he would deal with it—and quickly. His lips curved into the briefest of smiles. He would have her dispatched before she even realised what was happening.

‘Why, Pavlos,’ Ariston said softly as he reached them and he noticed that the woman had instantly grown tense. ‘This is a surprise. I wasn’t expecting to see you here so soon after the opening night. Have you developed a late-onset love of photography or are you just homesick for the island on which you were born?’

Pavlos didn’t look too happy to be interrupted—but Ariston didn’t care. Right then he couldn’t think about anything except what was happening inside him. Because, infuriatingly, he seemed to have developed no immunity against the green-eyed temptress he’d last seen when she was eighteen, when she’d thrown herself at him with a hunger which had blown his mind. Her submission had been instant and would have been total if he hadn’t put a stop to it. Displaying the sexist double standards for which he had occasionally been accused, he had despised her availability at the same time as he’d been bewitched by it. It had taken all his legendary self-control to push her away and to adjust his clothing but he had done it, though it had left him hard and aching for what had seemed like months afterwards. His mouth tightened because she was nothing but a tramp. A cheap and grasping little tramp. Like mother, like daughter, he thought grimly—and the last type of woman he wanted his brother getting mixed up with.

‘Oh, hi, Ariston,’ said Pavlos with the easy manner which made most people surprised when they learned they were brothers. ‘That’s right, here I am again. I decided to pay a second visit and meet up with an old friend at the same time. You remember Keeley, don’t you?’

There was a moment of silence while a pair of bright green eyes were lifted to his and Ariston felt the loud hammer of his heart.

‘Of course I remember Keeley,’ he said roughly, aware of the irony of his words. Because for him most women were forgettable and nothing more than a means to an end. Oh, sometimes he might recall a pair of spectacular breasts or a pert bottom—or if a woman was especially talented with her lips or hands, she might occasionally merit a nostalgic smile. But Keeley Turner had been in a class of her own and he’d never been able to shift her from the corners of his mind. Because she’d been off-limits and forbidden? Or because she had given him a taste of unbelievable sweetness before he’d forced himself to reject her? Ariston didn’t know. It was as inexplicable as it was powerful and he found himself studying her with the same intensity as the nearby people peering at the photos which adorned the gallery walls.

Petite yet impossibly curvy, her thick hair hung down her back in a curtain of pale and rippling waves. Her jeans were ordinary and her thin sweater unremarkable yet somehow that didn’t seem to matter. With a body like hers she could have worn a piece of sackcloth and still looked like dynamite. The cheap, man-made fabric strained over the lushness of her breasts and the blue denim caressed the curves of her bottom. Her mouth was bare of lipstick and her eyes wore only a lick of mascara as they studied him warily. Hers was not a modern look—yet there was something about Keeley Turner… An indefinable something which touched a sensual core deep inside him and made him want to peel her clothes from her body and ride her until she was screaming his name. But he wanted her gone more than he wanted to bed her—and maybe he should set about accomplishing that right now.

Deliberately excluding her from the conversation, Ariston turned to his brother and summoned up a bland smile. ‘I wasn’t aware you two were friends.’

‘We haven’t actually seen each other for years,’ said Pavlos. ‘Not since that holiday.’

‘I suspect that holiday is an event which none of us particularly care to revisit,’ said Ariston smoothly, enjoying the sudden rush of colour which had made her cheeks turn a deep shade of pink. ‘Yet you’ve stayed in touch with each other all this time?’

‘We’re friends on social media,’ Pavlos elaborated, with a shrug. ‘You know how it is.’

‘Actually, I don’t. You know my views on social media and none of them are positive.’ Ariston made no attempt to hide his frosty disapproval. ‘I need to talk to you, Pavlos. Alone,’ he added.

Pavlos frowned. ‘When?’

‘Now.’

‘But I’ve only just met up with Keeley. Can’t it wait?’

‘I’m afraid it can’t.’ He saw Pavlos shoot her an apologetic glance as if to apologise for his brother’s bullish behaviour but social niceties didn’t bother him. He’d worked hard for most of his life to ensure that Pavlos was kept away from the kind of scandals which had once engulfed their family. He’d been determined he wouldn’t go the same sorry way as their father. He’d made sure that he’d attended a good boarding school in England and a university in Switzerland, and he had carefully influenced his choice of friends—and girlfriends. And this pretty little tramp in her cheap dress and come-to-bed eyes was about to learn that his baby brother was strictly off-limits. ‘It’s business,’ he added firmly.

‘Not more trouble in the Gulf?’

‘Something like that,’ Ariston agreed, irritated at his brother’s attitude and wondering why he’d forgotten you didn’t talk family business in front of strangers. ‘We can use one of the offices here at the gallery—they’re very accommodating,’ he added smoothly. ‘The owner is a friend of mine.’

‘But Keeley—’

‘Oh, don’t worry about Keeley. I’m sure she has the imagination to take care of herself. There’s plenty for her to look at.’ Ariston turned to give her a hard version of a smile, noticing that her knuckles had suddenly whitened as she clutched her thin shawl. For the first time he spoke directly to her, dropping his voice to a silken murmur which his business rivals would have recognised as being a tone you didn’t mess with. ‘And plenty of men hanging around who would be all too happy to take my brother’s place. In fact, I can see a couple watching you right now. I’m sure you could have a lot of fun with them, Keeley. You really mustn’t let us keep you any longer.’

Keeley felt her face freeze as Ariston spoke to her, wishing she could come up with a suitably crushing response to throw at the powerful Greek who was looking at her as if she was a stain on the pale floorboards and talking to her as if she was some kind of hooker. But the truth was that she didn’t trust herself to speak—afraid that her words would come out as meaningless babble. Because that was the effect he had on her. The effect he had on all women. Even when he was talking to them—or should she say at them?—with utter contempt in his eyes, he could reduce them to a level of longing which wasn’t like the stuff you felt around most men. He could make you have fantasies about him, even though he exuded nothing but darkness.

She’d seen the way her own mother had looked at him. She could see the other women in the gallery watching him now—their gazes hungry but wary—as if they were observing a different type of species and weren’t sure how to handle him. As if they realised they should stay well away but were itching to touch him all the same. And she could hardly judge them for that, could she? Because hadn’t she flung herself at him? Pressed her body hard against his and longed for him to take away the aching deep inside her. Behaved like a cheap little fool by misinterpreting a simple gesture on his part and managing to make a bad situation even worse.

The last time she’d seen him her life had pretty much imploded and eight years later she was still dealing with the fallout. Keeley’s mouth tightened. Because she’d come through far too much to let the arrogant billionaire make her feel bad about herself. She suspected that the mocking challenge sparking from his blue eyes was intended to make her excuse herself and disappear, but she wasn’t going to do that. A quiet rebellion began to build inside her. Did he really think he had the power to kick her out of this public gallery, as once he had kicked her off his private island?

‘I wasn’t planning on going anywhere,’ she said, seeing his eyes darken with anger. ‘I’m quite happy looking at photographs of Lasia. I’d forgotten just what a beautiful island it was and I can certainly keep myself occupied until you get back.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll wait here for you, Pavlos. Take as long as you like.’

It clearly wasn’t the response Ariston wanted and she saw the irritation which hardened his beautiful features.

‘As you wish,’ he said tightly. ‘Though I cannot guarantee how long we’ll be.’

She met his cold blue stare with a careless smile. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m not in any hurry.’

He shrugged. ‘Very well. Come, Pavlos.’

He began to walk away with his brother by his side and, although she told herself to look away, Keeley could do nothing but stand and stare, just like everyone else in the gallery.

She’d forgotten how tall and rugged he was because she had forced herself to forget—to purge her memory of a sensuality which had affected her like no other. But now it was all coming back. The olive skin and tendrils of hair which brushed so blackly against his shirt collar. Yet she thought he seemed uncomfortable in the exquisite grey suit he wore. His muscular body looked constrained—as if he was more at home wearing the sawn-off denims he’d worn on Lasia. The ones which had emphasised his powerful thighs as he’d dived deep into the sapphire waters surrounding his island home. And it suddenly occurred to her that it didn’t matter what he wore or what he said because nothing had changed. Not really. You saw him and you wanted him, it was as simple as that. She thought how cruel life could be—as if she needed any reminding—that the only man she’d ever desired was someone who made no secret about despising her.

With an effort, she tore her gaze away and forced herself to focus on a photograph which showed the island which had been in the Kavakos family for generations. Lasia was known as the paradise of the Cyclades with good reason and Keeley had felt as if she’d tumbled into paradise the moment she’d first set foot on its silvery sands. She had explored its surprisingly lush interior with delight until her mother’s startling fall from grace had led to their visit being cut brutally short. She would never forget the hordes of press and the flash of cameras in their faces as they’d alighted from the boat which had taken them back to Piraeus. Or the screaming headlines when they’d arrived back in England—and the cringe-making interviews her mother had given afterwards, which had only made matters worse. Keeley had been tainted by the scandal—an unwilling victim of circumstances beyond her control—and the knock-on effect had continued to this day.

Wasn’t it that which had made her come here this afternoon—to meet up with Pavlos and remind herself of the beauty of the place? As if by doing that she could draw a line under the past and have some kind of closure? She’d hoped she might be able to eradicate some of the awful memories and replace them with better ones. She’d seen a picture of Ariston in the paper, attending the opening night, with some gorgeous redhead clinging like a vine to his arm. She certainly hadn’t expected him to show up here today. Would she have come if she had known?

Of course she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t have set foot within a million miles of the place.

‘Keeley?’

She turned around to find that Pavlos was back—with Ariston standing slightly behind him, not bothering to disguise the triumph curving his lips as his gaze clashed with hers.

‘Hi,’ she said, aware that the blue burn of his eyes was making her skin grow hot. ‘You weren’t long.’

A look of regret passed over Pavlos’s face and somehow Keeley knew what was coming.

‘No. I know I wasn’t. Look, I’m afraid I’m going to have to bail out, Keeley,’ he said. ‘And take a rain check. Ariston needs me to fly out to the Middle East and take care of a ship.’

‘What, now?’ questioned Keeley, before she could stop herself.

‘This very second,’ put in Ariston silkily before adding, ‘Should he have checked with you first?’

Pavlos bent to brush a brief kiss over each of her cheeks before giving her a quick smile. ‘I’ll message you later. Okay?’

‘Sure.’ She stood and watched him leave, aware that Ariston was still standing behind her but not trusting herself even to look at him. Instead, she tried very hard to concentrate on the photo she’d been studying—a sheltered bay where you could just make out shapes of giant turtles swimming in the crystal-clear waters. Perhaps he might just take the hint and go away. Leave her alone so that she could get to work on forgetting him all over again.

‘I can’t quite work out whether you are completely oblivious to my presence,’ he said, in his dark, accented voice, ‘or whether you just get a kick out of ignoring me.’

He had moved closer to stand beside her and Keeley lifted her gaze to find herself caught in that piercing sapphire stare and the resulting rush of blood went straight to her head. And her breasts. She could feel them become heavy and aching as the slow beat of her blood engorged them. Her mouth dried. How did he do that? Her fingers had grown numb and she was feeling almost dizzy but somehow she managed to compose a cool sentence. ‘Why, do women always notice you whenever you walk into a room?’

‘What do you think?’

And it was then that Keeley realised that she didn’t have to play this game. Or any game. He was nothing to her. Nothing. So stop acting like he’s got some kind of power over you. Yes, she’d once made a stupid mistake—but so what? It was a long time ago. She’d been young and stupid and she’d paid her dues—not to him, but to the universe—and she didn’t owe him anything. Not even politeness.

‘Honestly?’ She gave a short laugh. ‘I think you’re unbelievably rude and arrogant, as well as having the most over-inflated ego of any man I’ve ever met.’

He raised his brows. ‘And I imagine you must have met quite a few in your time.’

‘Nowhere near the amount of women you must have notched up, if the papers are to be believed.’

‘I don’t deny it—but if you try to play the numbers game I’m afraid you’ll never win.’ His eyes glittered. ‘Didn’t anyone ever tell you that the rules for men and the rules for women are very different, koukla mou?’

‘Only in the outdated universe you seem to occupy.’

He gave a careless shrug. ‘It may not be fair but I’m afraid it’s a fact of life. And men are allowed to behave in a way which would be disapproved of in a woman.’

His voice had dipped into a velvety caress and it was having precisely the wrong effect on her. Keeley could feel a hot flush of colour flooding into her cheeks as she made to move away.

‘Let me pass, please,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘I don’t have to stand here and listen to this kind of Neanderthal…rubbish.’

‘No, you’re right. You don’t.’ He placed a restraining hand on her forearm. ‘But before you go, maybe this is the ideal opportunity to get a few things straight between us.’

‘What kind of things?’

‘I think you know what I’m talking about, Keeley.’

‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me.’ She shrugged. ‘Mind-reading was never one of my talents.’

His gaze hardened. ‘Then let me give it to you in words of one syllable, just so there can be no misunderstanding.’ There was a pause. ‘Just stay away from my brother, okay?’

She stared at him in disbelief. ‘Excuse me?’

‘You heard. Leave him alone. Find someone else to dig your beautiful claws into—I’m sure there must be plenty of takers.’

His hand was still on her arm and to the outside world it must have looked like an affectionate gesture between two people who’d just bumped into one another, but to Keeley it felt nothing like that. She could feel the imprint of his fingers through her sweater and it was almost as if he were branding her with his touch—as if he were setting her skin on fire. Angrily, she shook herself free. ‘I can’t believe you have the nerve to come out and say something like that.’

‘Why not? I have his best interests at heart.’

‘You mean you regularly go around warning off Pavlos’s friends?’

‘Up until now I haven’t felt the need to do more than keep a watchful eye on them but today I do. Funny that.’ He gave a mirthless smile. ‘I have no idea of your success rate with men, though I imagine it must be high. But I feel I’d better crush any burgeoning hopes you may have by telling you that Pavlos already has a girlfriend. A beautiful, decent woman he cares for very much and wedding bells are in the air.’ His eyes glittered. ‘So I wouldn’t bother wasting any more time on him if I were you.’

It struck Keeley again how controlling he was. Even now. As if all he had to do was to snap his fingers and everyone would just jump to attention. ‘And does he have any say in the matter?’ she demanded. ‘Have you already chosen the engagement ring? Decided where the wedding is going to be and how many bridesmaids?’

‘Just stay away from him, Keeley,’ he snapped. ‘Understand?’

The irony was that Keeley had absolutely no romantic leanings towards Pavlos Kavakos and never had done. They’d once been close, yes—but in a purely platonic way and she hadn’t seen him in years. Their current friendship, if you could call it that, extended no further than her pressing the occasional ‘like’ button or smiley face whenever he posted a photo of himself with a crowd of beautiful young things revelling in the sunshine. Meeting him today had been comforting because she realised he didn’t care what had happened in the past, but she was aware that they moved in completely different worlds which never collided. He was rich and she was not. She didn’t know or care that he had a girlfriend, but hearing Ariston’s imperious order was like a red rag to a bull.

‘Nobody tells me what to do,’ she said quietly. ‘Not you. Not anyone. You can’t move people around like pawns. I’ll see who I want to see—and you can’t do a thing to stop me. If Pavlos wants to get in touch, I’m not going to turn him away just because you say so. Understand?’

She saw the disbelief on his face which was quickly followed by anger, as if nobody ever dared defy him so openly, and she tried to ignore the sudden sense of foreboding which made her body grow even more tense. But she’d said her piece and now she needed to get away. Get away quickly before she started thinking about how it had felt to have him touch her.

She turned away and walked straight out of the gallery, not noticing that her cream shawl had slipped from her nerveless fingers. All she was aware of was the burn of Ariston’s eyes on her back, which made each step feel like a slow walk to the gallows. The glass elevator arrived almost immediately but Keeley was shaking as it zoomed her down to ground level and her forehead was wet with sweat as she stepped out onto the busy London pavement.

CHAPTER TWO

THE JOURNEY BACK to her home in New Malden passed in a blur as Keeley kept remembering the way Ariston had spoken to her—with a contempt he’d made no attempt to disguise. But that hadn’t stopped her breasts from tightening beneath his arrogant scrutiny, had it? Nor that stupid yearning from whispering over her skin every time she’d looked into the blue blaze of his eyes. And now she was going to have to start forgetting him all over again.

A sudden spring shower emptied itself on her head as she emerged from the train station. The April weather was notoriously unpredictable but she was ill-prepared for the rain and hadn’t packed an umbrella. By the time she let herself into her tiny bedsit she was dripping wet and cold and her fingers were trembling as she shut the door. But instead of doing the sensible thing of stripping off her clothes and boiling the kettle to make tea, she sank into the nearest chair, not caring that her clothes were damp and getting all crumpled. She stared out of the window but the rods of rain spattering onto the rooftops barely registered. Suddenly she was no longer sitting shivering in a small and unremarkable corner of London. Her mind was playing tricks on her and all she could see was a wide silver beach with beautiful mountains rising up in the distance. A paradise of a place. Lasia.

Keeley swallowed, unprepared for the sudden rush of memory which made the past seem so vivid. She remembered her surprise at finding herself on Lasia—a private island owned by the powerful Kavakos family, with whom she’d had no connection. She’d been staying on nearby Andros with her mother who had spent the holiday complaining about her recent divorce from Keeley’s father and washing her woes away with too many glasses of retsina.

But Ariston’s own father had been one of those men who were dazzled by celebrity—even B-list celebrity—and when he’d heard that the actress and her teenage daughter were so close, had insisted they join him on his exclusive island home to continue their holiday. Keeley had been reluctant to gatecrash someone else’s house party but her mother had been overjoyed at the free upgrade, her social antennae quivering in the presence of so many rich and powerful men. She had layered on extra layers of ‘war paint’ and crammed her body into a bikini which was much too brief for a woman her age.

But Keeley had wanted none of the party scene because it bored her. Despite her relatively tender years, she’d had her fill of the decadent parties her mother had dragged her to since she’d been old enough to walk. At eighteen, she just tried to stay in the background because that was where she felt safest. Over the years her mother’s sustained girlishness had contributed to her becoming an out and out tomboy, despite her very bothersome and very feminine curves. She remembered being overjoyed to meet the sporty Pavlos, with whom she’d hit it off immediately. The Greek teenager had taught her how to snorkel in the crystal bays and taken her hiking in the blue-green mountains. Physical attraction hadn’t come into it because, like many children brought up by a licentious parent, Keeley had been something of a prude. She’d never felt a single whisper of desire and the thought of sex had been mildly disgusting. She and Pavlos had been like brother and sister—growing brown as berries as they explored the island paradise which had felt like their own miniature kingdom.

But then one morning his older brother Ariston had arrived in a silvery-white boat, looking like some kind of god at its helm, with his tousled black hair, tawny skin and eyes which matched the colour of the dark sea. Keeley remembered watching him from the beach, her heart crashing in an unfamiliar way. She remembered her mouth growing dry as he jumped onto the sand, the fine silver grains spraying up around his bronzed calves like Christmas glitter. Later, she’d been introduced to him but had remained so self-conscious in his presence that she’d barely been able to look him in the eye. Not so all the other women at the house party. She’d cringed at the way her mother had flirted with him—even asking him to rub suncream into her shoulders. Keeley remembered his barely perceptible shudder as he delegated the task to a female member of staff, and her mother’s pout when he did so.

And then had come the night of the party—the impressive party to which the Greek Defence Minister had been invited. Keeley remembered the febrile atmosphere and Ariston’s disapproving face as people started getting more and more drunk. Remembered wondering where her mother had disappeared to—only to discover that she’d been caught making out with the minister’s driver, her blonde head bobbing up and down on the back seat of the official car as she administered oral sex to a man half her age. Someone had even filmed them doing it. And that was when all hell had broken loose.

Keeley had fled down to the beach, too choked with shame to be able to face anyone, too scared to read the disgust in their expressions and wanting nothing but to be left alone. But Ariston had come after her and had found her crying. His words had been surprisingly soft. Almost gentle. He’d put his arms around her, and it had felt like heaven. Was it because her mother never showed physical affection and her father had been too old to pick her up when she was little which had caused Keeley to misconstrue what was happening, so she mistook comfort for something else? Was that why the desire which had been absent from her life now shot through her like a flame, making her behave in a way she’d never behaved before?

It had been so powerful, that feeling. Like a primitive hunger which had to be fed. Pressing her body against Ariston’s, she’d risen up on tiptoe as her trembling mouth sought his. After a moment he had responded and that response had been everything she could have dreamed of. For a few minutes the feeling had intensified as his lips had pressed down urgently against hers. She’d felt his tongue nudging against her mouth and she’d opened her mouth in silent invitation. And then his fingers had been on her quivering breasts, impatiently fingering her nipples into peaking points before guiding her hand towards his trousers. There had been no shyness on her part, just a glorious realisation of the power of her own sexuality—and his. She remembered the ragged groan he’d made as she’d touched him there. The way she’d marvelled at the hard ridge pushing against his trousers as, greedily, she had run her fingertips over it. Passion had swamped shyness and she’d been so consumed by it that she suspected she would have let him do whatever he wanted, right there and then on the silvery sand—until suddenly he had thrust her away from him with a look on his shadowed face which she would remember as long as she lived.

‘You little…tramp,’ he’d said, his voice shaking with rage and disgust. ‘Like mother, like daughter. Two filthy little tramps.’

She’d never realised until that moment how badly rejection could hurt. Just like she hadn’t realised how someone could make you feel so cheap. She remembered the shame which flooded through her as she vowed never to put herself in that position again. She would never allow herself to be rejected again. But her own pain had been quickly superseded by what had happened when they’d returned to England and her mother’s lifestyle had finally caught up with her—and in one way and another they’d been paying the price ever since.

She pushed the bitter memories away because her hair was still damp and she had now started to shiver so Keeley forced herself to get up and to go into the cramped bathroom, where the miserable jet of tepid water trickling from the shower did little to warm her chilled skin. But the brisk rub of a rough towel helped and so did the big mug of tea she made herself afterwards. She’d just put on her uniform when there was a knock on the door and she frowned. Her social circle was tiny because of the hours she worked, but even so she didn’t often invite people here. She didn’t want people coming in and judging her. Wondering how the only daughter of a wealthy man and an actress whose face had graced cinema screens in a series of low-budget vampire movies should have ended up living in such drastically reduced circumstances.

A louder knock sounded and she pulled open the door, her curiosity dying on her lips when she saw who was standing there. Her heart pounded in her chest as she looked into the blaze of Ariston’s eyes and she gripped the door handle, hard. His black hair was wet and plastered to his head and his coat was spattered with raindrops. She knew she should tell him to get lost before slamming the door shut in his face but the powerful impact of his presence made her hesitate just as the siren tug of her body betrayed her yet again. Because he was just so damned gorgeous…with his muscular physique and that classical Greek face with the tiny bump midway down his nose.

‘What are you doing here?’ she said coldly. ‘Did you think of a few more insults you’d forgotten to ram home?’

His lips curved into an odd kind of smile. ‘I think you left…this.’

She stared down at the cream shawl he was holding, her heart automatically contracting. It was an old wrap which had belonged to her mother—a soft, cashmere drift of a thing embroidered with tiny pink flowers and green leaves. These days it was faded and worn, but it reminded her of the woman her mother used to be and a lump rose in her throat as she lifted her gaze to his.

‘How did you find out where I live?’ she questioned gruffly.

‘It wasn’t difficult. You signed the visitors’ book at the gallery, remember?’

‘But you didn’t have to bring it yourself. Couldn’t you have asked one of your minions to do it?’

‘I could. But there are some things I prefer not to delegate.’ He met her eyes. ‘And besides, I don’t think we’ve quite finished our conversation, do you?’

She supposed they hadn’t and that somehow there seemed to be a lot which had been left unsaid. And maybe it was better that way. Yet something was stopping her from closing the door on him. She told herself he had gone out of his way to bring her mum’s shawl back to her and he was very wet. Did he sense her hesitation? Was that why he took a step forward?

‘So aren’t you going to ask me inside?’ he persisted softly.

‘Suit yourself,’ she said carelessly, but her heart was thumping like a crazy thing as she walked back into the little bedsit and heard him shut the door to follow her. And when she turned round and saw him standing there—so powerful and masculine—her breasts grew hot and heavy with desire. Why him? she thought despairingly. Why should Ariston Kavakos be the only man who should make her feel so insanely alive? Her smile was tight. ‘Though if you’re going to try to justify your ridiculously controlling behaviour, I wouldn’t bother.’

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ he questioned silkily.

‘It means that you turn up and suddenly send your brother away to sea—just to get him away from me. Isn’t that a little desperate?’

His lips hardened. ‘Like I told you. He already has a girlfriend. A young woman of Greek origin who has just qualified as a doctor and is light years away from someone like you. And if you must know, the business in the Gulf is both urgent and legitimate—you flatter yourself if you think I’d manufacture some kind of catastrophe just to remove him from your company. But I’m not going to lie. I can’t deny I’m happy he’s gone.’

She felt the sting of his words yet she could almost understand his concern—even though it was misplaced—because the contrast between her and Pavlos’s girlfriend couldn’t have been greater. She could imagine how Ariston must see it, in that simplistic and chauvinistic way of his. The qualified professional doctor versus someone with barely an exam to her name. If he’d gone about it differently—if he’d asked her nicely—then Keeley might have done what he wanted her to do. She might have given him her word that she’d never see Pavlos again—which was probably true in any case. But he wasn’t asking, was he? He was telling. And it wasn’t so much the contempt in his eyes which was making her angry—it was the total lack of respect. As if she meant nothing. As if her feelings counted for nothing. As if she was to spend the rest of her life paying for one youthful mistake. She tilted her chin upwards. ‘If you think you can tell me what to do, then you’re wrong,’ she said. ‘Very, very wrong.’

Ariston stiffened because her defiance was turning him on and that was the last thing he wanted. He’d come here ostensibly to return the shawl she’d left behind and yet part of him had wanted to see her again, even though he’d convinced himself he was only looking out for his brother’s welfare. In the car he had briefly buried his nose in the soft cashmere and smelt Keeley’s faint and flowery perfume. He’d wondered whether she had deliberately left it behind to get his brother to come running after her when he arrived back in England. Had that been her not so subtle plan? Did she sense a softness in his younger sibling and a susceptibility to her blonde sexiness which could override what seemed to be a perfect relationship with his long-term girlfriend?

He remembered how close she and Pavlos had been on that holiday, how they used to run around together all the time. People said the past had powerful and sentimental tentacles and she’d known his brother when he was young and impressionable. Long before he’d reached the age of twenty-five and come into the massive trust fund which had changed people’s attitude towards him, because wealth always did. Mightn’t Pavlos read more into his date with the sexy blonde than there really was and forget the safe and settled future which was carefully laid out for him? What if Keeley Turner realised that a fortune was there for the taking if she just went about it the right way?

He glanced around her home, more surprised by her environment than he could remember being surprised by anything in a long time. Because this wasn’t just a low standard of living—this was breadline living. He’d imagined peacock feathers and glittery necklaces draped over mirrors. Walls dripping with old photos depicting her mother’s rather tawdry fame, but there was nothing other than neatness and an almost bland utilitarianism. The most overriding feature was one of cleanliness. His mouth hardened. Was that simply a clever ploy to illustrate what a good little homemaker she could be, if only some big and powerful man would take her away from all this and give her the opportunity?

He’d been doing his best not to stare at her because staring only increased his desire and a man could think more clearly when his blood wasn’t heated by lust. But now he looked at her dispassionately and for the first time he registered that she was wearing some kind of uniform. He frowned. Surely she wasn’t a nurse? He took in a shapeless navy dress edged by a paler blue piping and then noticed a small badge depicting a bright, cartoon sun and what looked like a chicken drumstick underneath the words ‘Super Save’. No. His mouth twisted. Definitely not a nurse.

‘You work in a shop?’ he demanded.

He could see the indecision which fretworked her brow, before she gave him another defiant tilt of her chin which made her lips look utterly kissable.

‘Yes, I work in a shop,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘Why not?’ she questioned angrily. ‘Somebody has to. How else do you think all the shelves get stacked with new produce? Or, let me guess—you never actually do your own shopping?’

‘You’re a shelf-stacker?’ he asked incredulously.

Keeley drew in a deep breath. If it had been anyone else she might have blurted out the truth about her mother and all the other dark stuff which had led her to having to leave so many jobs that, in the end, Super Save supermarket had been her unlikely saviour. She might have explained that she was doing her best to make up for all those lost, gypsy-like years by studying hard whenever she had a spare moment and was doing an online course in bookkeeping and business studies. She might even have plunged the very depths of her own despair and conveyed the sense of hopelessness she felt when she visited her mother every week. When she saw how the once vibrant features had become an unmoving mask while those china-blue eyes stared unseeingly into the distance. When, no matter how many times she prayed for a different outcome, her mother failed to recognise the young woman she had given birth to.

Briefly Keeley closed her eyes as she remembered the awkward conversation she’d had last week with the care-home manager. How she’d been informed that costs were spiralling and they were going to have to put the fees up and that there was only so much that the welfare state could do. And when she’d tried to protest about her mum being moved to that horrible great cavern of a place which was not only cheaper but miles away, she had been met with a shrugging response and been told that nobody could argue with economics.

But why imagine that Ariston Kavakos would have anything other than a cold and unfeeling heart? As if he would even care about her problems. The controlling billionaire clearly wanted to think the worst about her and she doubted whether coming out with her own particular sob story would change his mind. Suddenly she felt sorry for Pavlos. How awful to have a brother who was so determined to orchestrate your life that you weren’t allowed the personal freedom to make your own friends. Why, the sexy Greek billionaire standing in front of her was nothing more than a raging megalomaniac!

‘Yes, I’m a shelf-stacker,’ she said quietly. ‘Do you have a problem with that?’

Ariston wanted to say that the only problem he had was with her. With her inherent sensuality, which managed to transcend even the ugly outfit she was wearing. Or maybe it was because he’d seen her in a swimsuit, with the sopping wet fabric clinging to every feminine curve. Maybe it was because he knew what a killer body lay beneath the oversized uniform which was making him aroused. Yet it was a shock to discover just how humble her circumstances were. As a gold-digger she clearly wasn’t as effective as her mother had been or she wouldn’t have ended up in a crummy apartment, working unsociable hours in a supermarket.

In his mind he began to do rapid calculations. She was obviously broke and therefore easy to manipulate, but he also sensed that she presented an unknown kind of danger. If it hadn’t been for Pavlos he would have fought the infuriating desire to kiss her and just walked away, consigning her to history. He would have phoned the sizzling supermodel he’d taken to the photographic exhibition and demanded she drop everything. Especially her panties. He swallowed, because the equally infuriating reality was that the model seemed instantly forgettable when he compared her to Keeley Turner in her unflattering uniform. Was it the fire spitting from her green eyes and the indignant tremble of those lips which made him want to dominate and subdue her? Or because he wanted to protect his brother from someone like her? He’d sent Pavlos off to sea to deal with a crew in revolt—but as soon as the situation was resolved he would return. And who was to say what the two of them might get up to if his back was turned? He couldn’t keep them apart—no matter how powerful he was. Mightn’t her ethereal blonde beauty tempt his brother into straying, despite the lovely young woman waiting for him in Melbourne?

Suddenly his thoughts took on a completely different direction as a solution came out of nowhere. A solution of such satisfying simplicity that it almost took his breath away. Because weren’t men territorial above all else—especially Kavakos men? He and Pavlos hadn’t been brought up to share—not their toys, nor their thoughts, and certainly not their women. The age difference between them had guaranteed that just as much as the bleak and unsettled circumstances of their childhood. So what if he seduced her before his brother got a chance? Pavlos certainly wouldn’t be interested in one of his cast-offs—so wouldn’t that effectively remove her from his brother’s life for good?

Ariston swallowed. And sex might succeed in eradicating her from his mind, once and for all. Because hadn’t she been like a low-grade fever all these years—a fever which still flared up from time to time? She was the only woman he’d ever kissed and not had sex with and perhaps it was his need for perfection and completion which demanded he remedy that aching omission.

He looked around her shabby home. At the thin curtains at the window which looked out over a rainy street and the threadbare rug on the floor. And suddenly he realised it could be easy. It always was with women, when you brought up the subject of cash. His mouth hardened with bitter recall as he remembered the monetary transaction which had defined and condemned him when he had been nothing more than a boy. ‘Do you need money?’ he questioned softly. ‘I rather think you do, koukla mou.’

‘You’re offering me money to stay away from your brother? Seriously?’ She stared at him. ‘Isn’t that what’s known as blackmail?’

‘Actually, I’m offering you money to come and work for me. More money than you could have ever dreamed of.’

‘You mean you have your own supermarket?’ she questioned sarcastically. ‘And need your very own shelf-stacker?’

He very nearly smiled but forced himself to clamp his lips together before returning her gaze. ‘I haven’t been tempted into retail as of yet,’ he said drily. ‘But I have my own island, on which I occasionally entertain. In fact, I’m flying back there tomorrow to prepare for a house party.’

‘How nice for you. But I don’t see what that has to do with me. Am I supposed to congratulate you on having so many friends—even though it’s difficult to believe you actually have any?’

A pulse began to beat insistently at his temple because Ariston wasn’t used to such a feisty and insolent reaction—and never from a woman. Yet it made him want to pull her into his arms and crush his lips down hard against hers. It made him want to push her up against the wall and have her moaning with pleasure as he slid his fingers inside her panties. He swallowed. ‘I’m telling you because during busy times on the island, there is always work available for the right person.’

‘And you think I’m the right person?’

‘Well, let’s not push credibility too far.’ His lips twisted as he looked around. ‘But you’re clearly short of money.’

‘I’m sure most people are compared to you.’

‘We’re talking about your circumstances, Keeley, not mine. And this apartment of yours is surprisingly humble.’

Keeley didn’t deny it. How could she? ‘And?’

‘And I’m curious. How did that happen? How did you get from being flown around Europe on private jets to…this? Your mother must have made a stack of money from her various liaisons with wealthy men and her habit of giving tell-all interviews to the press. Doesn’t she help fund her daughter’s lifestyle?’

Keeley stared him out, thinking how very wrong he’d got it but she wasn’t going to tell him. Why should she? Some things were just too painful to recount, especially to a cold and uncaring man like him. ‘That’s none of your business,’ she snapped.

A calculating look entered his eyes. ‘Well, whatever it is you’re doing—it clearly isn’t working. So how about earning yourself a bonus?’ he continued softly. ‘A big, fat bonus which could catapult you out of the poverty trap?’

She looked at him suspiciously, trying to dampen down the automatic spring of hope in her heart. ‘Doing what?’

He shrugged. ‘Your home is surprisingly clean and tidy, so I assume you’re capable of doing housework. Just as I assume you’re able to follow simple instructions and help around the kitchen.’

‘And you trust me enough to employ me?’

‘I don’t know. Can I?’ His gaze seared into her. ‘I imagine the reason for your relative poverty is probably because you’re unreliable and easily bored by the mundane—and that maybe things didn’t fall into your lap as effortlessly as you thought they might. Am I right, Keeley? Did you discover that you weren’t as successful a freeloader as your mother?’

‘Go to hell,’ she snapped.

‘But I suspect that if the price was right you would be prepared to knuckle down,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘So how about if I offered you a month as a temporary domestic on my Greek estate—and the opportunity to earn yourself the kind of money which could transform your life?’

Her heart was beating very hard. ‘And why would you do that?’ she croaked.

‘You know why.’ His voice grew harsh. ‘I don’t want you in London when Pavlos returns. He’s due to fly to Melbourne in two weeks’ time, hopefully with a diamond ring tucked inside his pocket—and after that, I don’t care what you do. Let’s just call it an insurance policy, shall we? I’m prepared to pay a big premium to keep you out of my brother’s life.’

His disapproval washed over her like dirty water and Keeley wanted to tell him exactly what he could do with his offer, yet she couldn’t ignore the nagging voice in her head which was urging her to be realistic. Could she really afford to turn down the kind of opportunity which would probably never come her way again, just because she loathed the man who was making it?

‘Tempted?’ he questioned softly.

Oh, she was tempted, all right. Tempted to tell him that she’d never met anyone so charmless and insulting. Keeley felt her skin grow hot as she realised he was offering her a job as some kind of skivvy. Someone to get her hands dirty by tidying up after him and his fancy guests. To chop vegetables and change his bed while he cavorted on the silvery beach with whoever his current squeeze was—probably the stunning redhead he’d taken to the gallery opening with him. He was looking down his proud and patrician nose at her and she opened her mouth to say she’d rather starve than accept his offer until she reminded herself of the significant fact she’d been in danger of forgetting. Because it wasn’t just herself she had to consider, was it?

She stared down at one of the holes in the carpet as she thought of her mother and the little treats which added to her life, even though she was completely oblivious to them. The weekly manicure and occasional hairdo to primp those thinning curls into some sort of shape, so that in some ways she resembled the woman she had once been. Vivienne Turner didn’t know that these things were being done for her, but Keeley did. Sometimes she shuddered to imagine what her mother’s reaction would have been if she’d been able to look into a crystal ball and see the life she’d been condemned to live. But nobody had a crystal ball, thank goodness. Nobody could see what lay ahead. And when occasionally other patients’ relatives or members of staff recognised the shell of the woman who had once been Vivienne Turner, Keeley was proud that her mother looked as good as she possibly could. Because that would have mattered. To her.

So test him, she thought. See what the mighty Ariston Kavakos is putting on the table. See if it’s big enough to enable you to endure his company for longer than a minute. ‘How much,’ she said baldly, ‘are you offering me?’

Ariston swallowed down his distaste as he heard the shrewd note which had entered her voice and he realised that Keeley’s greed was as transparent as her mother’s. His mouth twisted. How he despised her and everything she stood for. Yet his natural revulsion was not enough to destroy his desire for her and his mouth grew dry as he thought about having sex with Keeley Turner. Because it was inconceivable that she would return to Lasia and not sleep with him. It would bring about satisfaction and closure—for both of them. The fever in his blood would be removed and afterwards she could be quietly airbrushed from all their lives. She would be rewarded with enough money to satisfy her. She would disappear into the sunset. Most important of all—Pavlos would never see her again.

He smiled as he mentioned a sum of money, expecting her simpering gratitude and instant acceptance, but instead he was met with a look from her green eyes which was almost glacial.

‘Double it,’ she said coolly.

Ariston’s smile died but he could feel the insistent beat of lust intensifying because her attitude made his callous plan a whole lot easier to execute. Every woman could be bought, he remembered bitterly. You just had to negotiate the right price.

‘You have a deal,’ he said softly.

CHAPTER THREE

LASIA WAS AS beautiful as Keeley remembered it. No. Maybe even more so. Because when you were eighteen you thought that sunny days would never end and beauty would last for ever. You never imagined that life could turn out so different from how you’d imagined. She’d thought the money would last. She’d thought…

No. She gazed out of the car window at the cloudless blue sky. She wasn’t going to do that thing. She wasn’t going to look back. She was here, on this stunning private island, to work for Ariston Kavakos and earn herself a nest egg for her poor, broken mother. Fixing her gaze on the dark blue line of the horizon, she reminded herself to start looking for the positives, not the negatives.

A fancy car had been waiting for her on Lasia’s only airstrip—its air-conditioned interior deliciously welcoming because, even though it was still only springtime, the midday sun was intense. During the flight over she’d wondered if any of Ariston’s staff might remember her and she was dreading any such recognition. But thankfully the driver was new—well, new to her—and his name was Stelios.

He seemed content to remain silent and Keeley said nothing as the powerful car snaked its way through the mountain roads towards the Kavakos complex on the other side of the island. But although outwardly calm, inside she was quaking for all kinds of reasons. For a start, she’d lost her job at the supermarket. Her manager had reacted with incredulity when she’d asked for a month’s unpaid holiday, telling her that she must have taken leave of her senses if she expected those kinds of perks. He’d added rather triumphantly that she was in the wrong job, but deep down Keeley had already known that. Because no matter how hard she’d tried, she’d never fitted in. Not there. Not anywhere if she stopped to think about it—and certainly not here, on this private paradise which exuded untold wealth and privilege. Where costly yachts bobbed on the azure sea as carelessly as a baby floated toys in the bathtub. She leaned forward to get a better look as the car rounded the bend and made its slow descent towards the complex she’d last seen when she was eighteen, blinking her eyes in surprise because everything looked so different.

Oh, not Assimenos Bay—that hadn’t changed. The natural cove with its silvery sand was as stunning as ever, but the vast house which had once dominated it had gone. The beachside mansion was no more and in its place stood an imposing building which seemed composed mainly of glass. Modern and magnificent, the transparent walls and curved windows reflected back the different hues of sea and sky so that Keeley’s first impression was that everything looked so blue. As blue as Ariston’s eyes, she found herself thinking, before reminding herself furiously that she wasn’t here to fantasise about him.

And then, as if she had conjured him up from her restless imagination, she saw the Greek tycoon standing at one of the vast windows on the first floor of the house. Standing watching her—his stance as unmoving as a statue. A ripple of unwilling awareness ran through her body as she stared up at him because even at a distance he dominated everything. Even though she was surrounded by so much natural beauty and the kind of scenery she hadn’t seen in a long time it still took a huge effort to drag her gaze away from him. And she mustn’t be seen ogling him like some helpless fan-girl. Hadn’t she made that mistake once before? And look where that had got her. This was her chance to redeem herself and the only way she could achieve that was by remaining immune to him and his effortless charisma. To show him she no longer wanted him—that ship had sailed—because she wasn’t into cruel billionaires who treated you with zero respect.

The car stopped and Stelios opened the door and Keeley could smell lemons and pine and the salty tang of the nearby sea as she stepped onto the sun-baked courtyard.

‘Here’s Demetra,’ said Stelios as a middle-aged woman in a crisp white uniform began walking through the shimmering heat towards them. ‘She’s the cook—but basically she’s in charge! Even Ariston listens when Demetra speaks. She’ll show you to your accommodation. You’re pretty lucky to be staying here,’ he observed. ‘All the other staff live in the village.’

‘Thank you.’ Keeley turned to him in surprise. ‘You speak perfect English!’

‘Pretty much. I lived in London for a while. Used to drive taxis for a living.’ Stelios gave an inscrutable smile. ‘Though the boss doesn’t like me to publicise it too much.’

No, she’d bet he didn’t. A silent but understanding driver would be an asset for a control freak like Ariston, thought Keeley wryly. Someone able to eavesdrop on the conversation of his English-speaking guests should the need arise. Yet she heard the obvious affection in the driver’s voice as he referred to his boss and wondered what the autocratic ship-owner had ever done to deserve it, apart from be born with a silver spoon in his mouth. But everyone liked you when you had money, she reminded herself. The world was full of hangers-on who were mesmerised by the lure of wealth. The same hangers-on who would drop you like a hot potato when all that wealth had gone.

She smiled as the cook approached, reminding herself it was important to be accepted by the people she was going to be working with and to show them she wasn’t afraid of hard work.

‘Kalispera, Demetra,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘I’m Keeley. Keeley Turner.’

‘Kalispera,’ said the cook, looking pleased. ‘You speak Greek?’

‘Not really. Only a couple of phrases.’ Keeley pulled a face. ‘But I’d love to learn more. Do you speak English?’

‘Neh. Kyrios Kavakos likes all his staff to speak English.’ She smiled. ‘We help each other. Come. I show you your house.’

Keeley followed the cook down a narrow sandy path leading directly to the beach, until they reached a small whitewashed cottage. She could hear the waves lapping against the shore and could see the moving glimmer of sunlight on the water, but, although she was surrounded by so much beauty, all she could remember was the uproar and the chaos. Because wasn’t it over there beside that crop of rocks that Ariston pulled her into his arms for that tantalisingly sweet taste of pleasure, before thrusting her away again? She closed her eyes as goosebumps shivered over her bare arms, despite the heat of the day. How could the memory of something which had happened so long ago still be so vivid?

‘You like it?’ questioned Demetra, obviously misinterpreting her silence.

‘Oh, gosh, yes. It’s…beautiful,’ said Keeley quickly.

Demetra smiled. ‘Oreos. All Lasia is oreos. Come to the house when you are ready and I show you everything.’

After Demetra had gone, Keeley went inside the cottage—leaving the door open so she could hear the waves as she set about exploring her temporary home. It didn’t take long to get her bearings because, although it was small and compact, it was still bigger than her home in London. There was a sitting room and a small kitchen, while upstairs was a bedroom with space for little more than a large bed. The bathroom was surprisingly sophisticated and the whole place was simple and clean, with walls painted white and completely bare of decoration. But the light which flooded into every room was incredible—bright and clear and shot with the dancing reflection of the waves. Who needed pictures on the walls when you had that?

Keeley unpacked, showered and changed into shorts and a T-shirt—and was just making her way downstairs when she saw Ariston walking towards her cottage. And try as she might, she could do nothing to prevent the powerful squeeze of her heart and the molten tug deep inside her.

She wanted to turn away. To close her eyes and shut him out…yet she wanted to watch him like the rerun of a favourite TV show. The powerful thrust of his thighs as he walked. The broadness of his shoulders and the bunched muscle of his arms. The way his white T-shirt contrasted with the darkness of his olive skin. Her mouth dried as she noticed the narrow band of skin showing above the low-slung waistband of his faded jeans. Because this was Ariston as she remembered him—not wearing a sophisticated suit which seemed to constrain him, but looking as if he could have just finished work on one of the fishing boats.

He was the most alpha male she’d ever seen but it was vital he didn’t guess she thought that way. She was going to have to respond to him indifferently—betraying none of her uneasy emotions whenever he came close. She needed to pretend he was just like any other man—even though he wasn’t. Because no other man had ever made her feel this way. She sucked in an unsteady breath as he approached, because the most important thing she needed to remember was that she didn’t actually like him.

‘So. Here you are,’ he observed, his blue eyes moving over her with their strange, cold fire.

‘Here I am.’ Feeling curiously insubstantial, she tugged at the hem of her T-shirt. ‘You sound surprised.’

‘Maybe I am. Part of me wondered whether you might change your mind at the last minute and not bother coming.’

‘Should I have done?’ She fixed him with a questioning gaze. ‘Would it have been wiser to have dismissed your generous job offer and carried on with my life the way it was, Kyrios Kavakos?’

As she stared at him so fearlessly, her bright green eyes so cat-like and entrancing, Ariston thought about the answers he could have given her. If she was someone he cared about he would have told her that, yes, she should have stayed well away from his island and the doomed orbit of a man like him. But the point was that he didn’t care. She was a commodity. A woman he intended to seduce and finish what she had started all those years ago. Why warn her to be on her guard against something which was going to bring them both a great deal of pleasure?

And closure, he reminded himself grimly. Because wasn’t closure equally important?

He stared at the thick pale hair which hung in a twisted rope over one shoulder, wondering why he found it so difficult to tear his eyes away from her. He’d known women more beautiful. He’d certainly known women more suitable than some washed-up ex-party-girl with dollar signs in her eyes. Yet knowing that did nothing to diminish her impact on him. Her lush breasts were pushing against a T-shirt the colour of the lemons which grew in the hills behind the house and a pair of cotton shorts skimmed her shapely hips and legs. She’d slipped her bare feet into a pair of sparkly flip-flops so that she looked unexpectedly carefree—and young—as if she hadn’t made the slightest effort to impress him with her appearance and the unexpectedness of this made desire spiral up inside him even more.

‘No, I think you’re in exactly the right place,’ he said evenly. ‘So let’s go into the house and I’ll show you around. I think you’ll find things have changed quite a lot since last time you were here.’

‘No, honestly. You don’t have to do that,’ she said. ‘Demetra has already offered.’

‘But I’m offering now.’

She tilted her head to one side. ‘Surely it would be more appropriate if another member of staff took me round? You must have plenty of other things you’d rather be doing—a busy man like you, with a great empire to control.’

‘I don’t care whether or not it’s appropriate, Keeley. I happen to be a very hands-on employer.’

‘And what you say goes, right?’

‘Exactly. So why don’t you just accept that, and do what I say?’

He was so ridiculously masterful, Keeley thought resentfully. Didn’t he realise how out of touch and outdated he sounded when he spoke like that? But even though she objected to his overbearing attitude, she couldn’t deny its effect on her. It was as if her body had been programmed to respond to his masculine dominance and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Her face was hot as she shut the cottage door and followed him across the beach towards his home, her flip-flops sinking into the soft sand as she scurried to match his pace.

‘Any questions you want to ask?’ he said, glancing down at her.

There were a million. She wanted to know why—at thirty-five and surely one of the world’s most eligible bachelors—he still wasn’t married. She wanted to know what made him so hard and cold and proud. She wanted to know if he ever laughed and if so, what made those sensual lips curve with humour. But she bit all those questions back because she had no right to ask them. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What made you knock the old house down?’

Ariston felt a pulse flicker at his temple as he lessened his stride so she could keep up with him. How ironic that she should choose a subject which still had the power to make him feel uncomfortable. He remembered the disbelief he’d faced when he’d proposed demolition of the old house, which had been rich in history. How people had thought he was acting out of a sense of misplaced grief after the death of his father. But it had been nothing to do with that. For him it had been a necessary rebirth. Should he tell her that he’d wanted to raze away the past along with those impressive walls? As if believing that those dark memories could be reduced to rubble, just like the bricks. That he’d wanted to forget the house where his mother had played with him until the day she’d walked away—leaving him and Pavlos in the care of their father. Just as he wanted to forget the parties and sickly-sweet stench of marijuana and the women flown in from destinations all over Europe—their given brief to ‘entertain’ his father and his jaded friends. Why would he tell Keeley Turner something like that—when she and her mother had been exactly those kind of women?

‘New broom, new era,’ he said, with a hard smile. ‘When my father died I decided I needed to make a few changes. To put my own stamp on the place.’

She was staring up at the wide glass structure. ‘Well, you’ve certainly done that.’

Her cooing words sounded speculative—the instinctive reaction of an avaricious woman confronted by affluence—but that didn’t quite cancel out the pleasure Ariston got from her praise. Or stop him thinking how much he’d like to hear that soft English voice whispering some very different things in his ear. Was she one of those women who talked during sex? he wondered. Or did she keep quiet until she started to come, gasping out her joyful pleasure into the man’s ear? His lips curved into a speculative smile. He couldn’t wait to find out.

He gestured for her to precede him though her wiggling bottom made it difficult for him to concentrate on the tour. He showed her the tennis court, the gym, his office and two of the smaller reception rooms—but decided against taking her upstairs to each of the seven en-suite bedrooms or, indeed, his own master suite. His throat tightened. Demetra could do that later.

At last he led her into the main sitting room, which was the focal point of the house, carefully watching her reaction as she was confronted by the sea view which dominated three of the massive glass walls. For a moment she stood there motionless—not appearing to notice the priceless Fabergé eggs which lay on one of the low tables, nor the rare Lysippos statue which he’d bought from under the noses of international dealers in an auction house in New York and which had sealed his reputation as a connoisseur of fine art.

‘Wow,’ she said indistinctly. ‘Who came up with this?’

‘I asked the architect to design me something to maximise the views and for each room to flow into the next,’ he said. ‘I wanted light and space everywhere—so that when I’m working it doesn’t seem like being in the office.’

‘I can’t imagine any office looking like this. It looks…well, it’s the most stunning place I’ve ever seen.’ She turned to face him. ‘The family business must be doing well.’

‘Reassuringly well,’ he said blandly.

‘You’re still building ships?’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘My brother didn’t tell you?’

‘No, Ariston. He didn’t tell me. We barely had time to reacquaint ourselves before you dragged him away.’

‘Yes, we’re still building ships,’ he affirmed. ‘But we’re also making wines and olive oil on the other side of the island, which have become a surprising hit in all kinds of places. These days people seem to value organic goods and Kavakos products are on the shopping list of most of the world’s big chefs.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Anything else you want to know?’

She brushed the palms of her hands down over her shorts. ‘In England you said you were expecting guests this weekend.’

‘That’s right. Two of my lawyers are flying in from Athens for lunch tomorrow and there are five people arriving at the weekend for a house party.’

‘And are they Greek?’

‘International,’ he drawled. ‘You want to know who they are?’

‘Isn’t it always polite to know people’s names in advance?’

‘And handy when you’re trying to research how much each is worth?’ he offered drily. ‘There’s Santino Di Piero, the Italian property tycoon who is coming with his English girlfriend, Rachel. There’s also a friend of mine from way back—Xenon Diakos who for some reason has decided to bring his secretary. I think her name is Megan.’

‘That’s four,’ she said, determined not to rise to the nasty digs he was making.

‘So it is. And Bailey Saunders is the other guest,’ he said, as if he’d only just remembered.

‘Her name seems familiar.’ She hesitated. ‘She’s the woman you took to the opening night of the photographic exhibition, isn’t she?’

‘Is that relevant, Keeley?’ he questioned silkily. ‘Or, indeed, any of your business?’

She shook her head, not knowing why she’d mentioned it, and now she felt stupid—and vulnerable. Embarrassed by her own curiosity and angry at the unwanted jealousy which was making her skin grow heated, Keeley walked over to the window and stared out unseeingly. Was she going to have to spend days witnessing Ariston making out with a beautiful woman? See them frolicking together in that amazing infinity pool or kissing on the beach in the moonlight? Would she have to change their bedsheets in the morning and see for herself the evidence of their shared passion? A shiver of revulsion shot through her and she prayed it didn’t show. Because even if she had to contend with those things—so what? Ariston was nothing to her and she was nothing to him and unless she remembered that, she was going to have a very difficult month ahead of her.

‘Of course it’s none of my business,’ she said stiffly. ‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘Didn’t mean to what?’ He had walked across the room to stand beside her at the window and she found herself inhaling his subtle citrusy scent. ‘Check out whether or not I had a girlfriend? Find out whether or not I was available? Don’t worry, Keeley—I’m used to women doing that.’

She struggled to say something conventional. To make some witty remark which might dissolve the sudden tension which had suddenly sprung up between them. To act as if she didn’t care or take him to task for his spectacular arrogance. But he was standing so close that she couldn’t think of a single word, and even if she could she didn’t think she’d be capable of saying it with any degree of conviction. Just like she didn’t seem capable of preventing the way he was making her feel—as if her body were no longer her own. As if it was silently responding to things she’d only ever dreamed of.

She looked up into his face to discover that his eyes had become smoky and it was as if he’d read her thoughts because suddenly he lifted his hand to frame her face with his fingers, and he smiled. It wasn’t a particularly nice smile and it didn’t even reach his eyes but the sensation of his touch sent Keeley’s already heightened senses into overdrive. His thumb stroked its way over her bottom lip so that it began to tremble uncontrollably. That was the only thing he was doing and yet it was making her want to melt. He was making her more aroused by the second and surely that must show. Her nipples had hardened into two painful little points and somewhere low in her belly she could feel a distracting and molten ache.

Did he realise that? Was that why his hold on her changed so that instead of cupping her face with his fingers, he was pulling her towards him? Pulling her into his arms as if it were his right to do so. His eyes were blazing as they stared into hers and she could feel the softness of her body moulding perfectly into the hardness of his, as he brought his mouth down on hers.

And Keeley shuddered because this was like no other kiss. It was like every fantasy she’d ever had—and wasn’t the truth of it that those fantasies had always involved him? He kissed her slow and then he kissed her hard. He kissed her until she was squirming, until she thought she would cry out with pleasure. She could feel the rush of heat and the clamour of frustration and all she wanted was to give into that feeling. To wrap her arms around his neck and let desire take over. Whisper in his ear to have him do whatever he wanted. What she wanted. Have him ease this terrible ache inside her as she suspected only he could.

And then what? Let him take you to his bed even though you know how much he despises you? Even though Bailey Saunders is arriving in a couple of days? Because that was how these people operated. She’d seen for herself the world in which he lived. Easy come, easy go.

It didn’t mean anything. She didn’t mean anything—hadn’t he already made that abundantly clear? And for someone with an already shaky sense of self-worth, such an action would be completely insane.

‘No!’ Keeley jerked away from him, taking a couple of steps back and trying to ignore the silent protest of her body. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, Ariston?’ she demanded. ‘Jumping on me like that!’

His short laugh was tinged with frustration. ‘Oh, please,’ he drawled. ‘Please don’t insult my intelligence, koukla mou—or your own for that matter. You were—are—hot and horny. You wanted me to kiss you and I was more than happy to oblige.’

‘I did not,’ she snapped back.

‘Oh, Keeley—why deny the truth? Not the best start, in the circumstances—not when I consider honesty an invaluable asset for all my employees.’

‘And surely crossing physical boundaries with your staff is unacceptable behaviour for any employer—have you stopped to consider that?’

‘Maybe if you stopped looking at me with such blatant invitation,’ he said silkily, ‘then I might be able to stop responding to you as a man, rather than as a boss.’

‘I was not!’ she said indignantly.

‘Weren’t you? Ask yourself that question again, only this time don’t lie to yourself.’

Keeley bit her lip. Had she been looking at him in invitation? Her heart pounded. Of course she had. And if she was being brutally honest, hadn’t she wanted him to kiss her since she’d seen him standing at the windows of his glass mansion, his powerful physique dominating everything around him? Maybe even before that—when he’d come striding across the London gallery towards her and Pavlos with a face like thunder and a body which was tensed and powerful. And she mustn’t let herself feel that way. She was here to earn money to help care for her stricken mother—not tangle with a self-confessed chauvinist like Ariston and get her heart broken in the process.

Drawing in a deep breath, she willed herself to at least look as if she were in control of her own emotions. ‘I can’t deny that there’s an attraction between us,’ she said. ‘But that doesn’t mean we’re going to act on it. Not just because you’re my boss and it’s inappropriate, but because we don’t even like each other.’

‘What does liking have to do with it?’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Totally serious.’ He shrugged. ‘In my experience, a little hostility always adds a touch of spice. Surely your mama taught you that, Keeley?’

The implied slur piled on yet another layer of hurt and Keeley wanted to hurl herself at him. To slam her fists angrily against that powerful chest and tell him to keep his opinions to himself because he didn’t know what he was talking about. But she didn’t trust herself to go near him because to touch him was to want him and she couldn’t afford to put herself in that position again. He had asked for honesty, hadn’t he? So why not just give it to him, even if it meant swallowing her pride in the process? Why pretend there was no elephant in the room when a whole herd of them were threatening to trample over her?

‘I have no intention of getting close to you, Ariston, mainly because you’re not the kind of man I like,’ she said slowly. ‘I came here to earn good money and that’s what I intend to do. Actually, it’s all I intend to do. I am going to work hard and to stay away from you as much as possible. I don’t intend putting myself in a position of vulnerability again.’ She forced a smile, injecting the requisite note of subservience into her voice, reminding herself to behave like the humble employee she was supposed to be. ‘So if you’ll excuse me—I’d better go and find out if there’s anything Demetra wants me to do in the kitchen.’

CHAPTER FOUR

SHE WAS DRIVING him crazy.

Crazy.

Sucking in a lungful of air, Ariston dived beneath the inky waters of a sea just starting to be gilded by the sun coming up over the horizon. It was early. Too early for anyone else to be around. Not even the staff were awake yet and the shutters remained tightly closed in the bedroom windows of Keeley’s cottage. And that was a pretty accurate metaphor for the current state of affairs between them, he thought grimly. For a man so utterly confident about his sexual power over women—and with good reason—things with Keeley Turner hadn’t quite gone according to plan.

For a while he swam strongly beneath the shadowed surface of the water, trying to rid his body of some of the restless energy which had been building up inside him, but that was easier said than done. He had been sleeping badly, with images of Keeley in various imagined stages of undress haunting his erotic and frustrating dreams. Because she’d meant what she’d said, he was discovering with growing incredulity—and despite the sexual chemistry which sizzled so powerfully between them, she had stubbornly kept him at arm’s length. He’d thought at first that her behaviour had been part of some contrived act intended to keep him on his toes. But there had been no relaxing of her attitude towards him. No sudden softening which might have indicated she was weakening. All interaction between them had followed a formal yet highly unsatisfactory path.

She politely enquired whether he would like coffee or bread, or water. She kept her eyes demurely lowered whenever their paths crossed. And no matter how many times he told her it was perfectly acceptable for her to use his Christian name in public, it fell on deaf ears. She was a conundrum, he thought. Was she really immune to the admiring glances she had attracted from his Athens-based lawyers when they had arrived on Lasia for lunch—or was she simply a very clever actress who knew the power of her own beauty? She acted as if she were made of marble, when he knew for a fact that beneath that cool and curvy exterior beat the heart of a passionate woman.

Had he thought that she would have succumbed to him by now? That the memory of the kiss they’d shared on her first day would have her sneaking in his arms to finish off what they’d started?

Of course he had.

That brief kiss had been the most erotic thing to happen to him in a long time but it had led precisely nowhere and although he wasn’t a man used to being denied what he really wanted—he was now being forced to experience exactly that. So he’d been a little distant with her, intending to indicate his disapproval of women who teased, thinking his impatience would make her realise his patience was wearing thin. He’d anticipated her finding him alone in some quiet moment. He’d imagined her sliding down the zipper of his trousers and touching him where he ached to be touched. He swallowed. Any other woman would have done—and Keeley certainly had history on that score. If things had gone according to plan, by now he should have bedded her and enjoyed several sessions of mind-blowing sex. In fact, by now he probably would have been growing bored with her inevitable adoration and his only dilemma would be working out the best way to tell her it was over.

But it hadn’t turned out like that.

She had thrown herself into her work with an enthusiasm which had taken him by surprise. Had she stacked supermarket shelves with such passion? he wondered wryly. Demetra had informed him that the Englishwoman was a joy to have around the kitchen and around the house. A joy? he wondered grimly. He had seen little evidence of it so far.

Was her frosty attitude intended to stoke up his sexual appetite? Because if that was the case then it was working. His blood pressure soared every time she walked onto the terrace in her crisp white uniform. The white cotton dress gave her a look of purity and her blonde hair was scraped neatly back into a no-nonsense chignon, which made her appear the perfect servant. Yet the glitter of fire in her green eyes whenever she was forced to meet his gaze was unmistakable—as if she was daring him to come near her again.

He resurfaced into the bright, golden morning, shaking droplets of water from his head before beginning to swim powerfully towards the shore. It was time to face the day ahead and to play at being host. Four of his guests had arrived but Bailey Saunders was no longer on the guest list. He’d phoned her a couple of days ago and asked for a rain check, and she had agreed. Of course she had. Women always did. He felt a beat of anticipation as he walked across the sand.

Maybe it was time for Keeley Turner to realise that it was pointless resisting the inevitable.

‘Will you take the coffee out, Keeley?’ Demetra pointed to the loaded tray.

‘Of course.’ Keeley smoothed down her white uniform dress. ‘Shall I put some of those little lemon biscuits on a plate?’

‘Efharisto.’

‘Parakalo.’ Automatically checking that she had everything she needed, Keeley carried it out onto the terrace with a heavy heart. Another trip to the table which had been set up next to the infinity pool, where Ariston was finishing a long lunch with his glamorous guests, and she was dreading it. Dreading seeing his rugged face watching her, his expression hidden behind his dark glasses as she tried to walk along the edge of the pool without appearing too self-conscious, but it was difficult. Just as it was difficult to forget that kiss they’d shared, when he’d made her usually non-responsive body spring to life—and left her in a state of frustrated arousal ever since. It was as if he’d lit the touchpaper of her repressed sexuality and set it on fire.

And she had only herself to blame.

Why hadn’t she stopped him from pulling her into his arms like that? Because she’d been powerless to stop him. She had wanted him to do it. She still wanted him to do it.

She bit her lip. She’d done her best to push him to the back of her mind—avoiding him whenever possible and concentrating on her work, determined to do a job she could be proud of. She wanted to wipe out his negative impressions of her and show him she could be honest and hard-working and decent. Just like she was determined not to raise the suspicions of the people she worked with. She liked Demetra and Stelios, just as she liked the extra staff who’d been drafted in from the nearby village to help with the house party. She didn’t want them to think she had some kind of thing with the boss. All she wanted was to be seen as the helpful Englishwoman who was eager to take on her fair share.

The sun was warm on her head as she took the coffee outside to where the five of them were sitting around the remains of the meal she’d served them—Xenon, Megan, Santino, Rachel and Ariston. She’d been introduced to them yesterday and they all seemed the jet-setting type of people she no longer associated with. She’d forgotten that life where women changed their outfits four times a day and spent more on a straw hat than Keeley spent on her entire summer wardrobe. She’d been as polite and as friendly as her position required but she was also aware that as a member of staff she was mostly invisible. Only the friendly Rachel had treated her as if she was a real person—and always made a point of chatting whenever she saw her.

Rachel’s long, bronzed legs were stretched out in front of her and she brightened when she saw Keeley approaching with the silver coffee pot glinting in the sunshine.

‘Oh, yum. I love this Greek coffee!’ she said. ‘It’s so thick and sweet.’

‘I won’t make the obvious comparison,’ commented Santino drily, easily catching the hastily balled napkin which his girlfriend hurled at him in mock rage.

Rachel took a small cup from the tray. ‘Thanks, Keeley. Is it possible to have some more sparkling water? It’s so hot today. You must be baking in that uniform,’ she observed, with a frown. ‘Does Ariston allow you to cool off in the pool or does he constantly keep your nose to the grindstone?’

‘Oh, Keeley knows she has the run of the place when she isn’t working,’ murmured Ariston. ‘She just chooses not to take advantage of it, don’t you, Keeley?’

They were all looking at her and Keeley was acutely aware of the fact that Rachel and Megan were both wearing gauzy kaftans over tiny bikinis, while she was wearing a uniform which made her feel completely overdressed as well as overheated. All Ariston’s staff wore uniforms—but somehow on her it looked all wrong. It was the right size and everything but it did unwanted things to her figure. It was the one thing she’d inherited from her mother which she could do nothing about. Because no matter how much she tried to disguise her shape with loose-fitting clothes, her bust always seemed too big and the curve of her hips that fraction too wide, so everything clung precisely where she didn’t want it to cling.

‘I have a great big ocean on my doorstep if ever I feel the need to swim, but when I’m not working I mostly spend time doing stuff on my computer,’ she said and then, because they were still looking at her questioningly, she felt obliged to offer some kind of explanation. ‘I’m studying for a diploma in business studies,’ she added.

‘Well, that’s all very admirable but you need to take time off occasionally. What’s it they say about all work and no play?’ questioned Rachel, raking her fingers back through her dark hair and shooting Ariston a quizzical glance. ‘Didn’t you say that Bailey has bailed this weekend, if you’ll excuse the pun?’

‘Bailey is no longer coming, no,’ Ariston said smoothly.

‘So we’ll be a woman short at dinner?’ persisted Rachel.

‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll be able to cope with that,’ said Santino. ‘Since when did you ever worry about odd numbers, cara? You always seem to have enough conversation to compensate for any absent guests.’

‘That much is true.’ Rachel smiled. ‘But why doesn’t Keeley join us instead, to make the numbers up?’

Ariston removed his dark glasses and glimmered Keeley an unfathomable look. ‘Yes,’ he said, his velvety accent seeming to whisper like velvet across her skin. ‘Why don’t you join us for dinner later?’

She shook her head. ‘No, honestly. I can’t.’

‘Why not? I’m giving you permission to take the evening off. In fact, look on it as an order.’ His smile was hard and determined. ‘I’m sure we have enough staff for you not to be missed waiting at table.’

‘It’s very…kind of you, but…’ Keeley put the last of the coffee cups down with trembling fingers before straightening up. ‘I don’t have anything suitable to wear.’

It was the wrong thing to say. Why hadn’t she just come out with an emphatic no?

‘No worries. You’re about the same size and height as me,’ said Megan, looking her up and down. ‘You can borrow something from me. Say yes, Keeley. You’ve been working so hard that you deserve a little downtime. And it would be my pleasure to lend you something.’

The two female guests were clearly on a mission to get her to change her mind and inwardly Keeley began to fume. She knew they were just trying to be kind, but she didn’t want their kindness. It made her feel patronised but, even worse, it made her feel vulnerable. They thought they were giving her a treat but in reality they were pushing her closer to Ariston and that was a place she didn’t want to be. But she could hardly give them the reason for her resistance, could she? She couldn’t really tell them she was worried she would end up in bed with her boss! And in the end, opposition was pointless because it was five against one and there was no way she could get out of it.

You’re having dinner with them, that’s all, she reminded herself as she stood beneath the cool jets of the shower later that afternoon. All she had to do was put on a borrowed dress and try to be pleasant. She could leave whenever she wanted. She didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do.

Which was how she found herself walking towards the starlit terrace that evening, wearing the only dress of Megan’s which fitted her and which was the last type of outfit she would normally have worn. It was too delicate. Too feminine. Too…revealing. In soft, blush pink, the low-cut bodice showcased her breasts and the silky fabric clung to her hips in precisely the way she didn’t want it to. And she wasn’t blind. Or stupid. She saw the way Ariston looked at her when she walked out onto the candlelit terrace. Saw the instinctive narrowing of his eyes, which set off an answering tightening in her breasts.

Her throat was so dry that she knocked back half a glass of champagne too quickly and it went straight to her head. It soothed her frazzled nerves but it also had the unwanted side effect of softening her reaction to her Greek boss, because naturally she found herself seated next to him. She told herself she wasn’t going to be affected by him. That he was a callous manipulator who had no regard for her feelings. But somehow her thoughts weren’t making it to her body. Her body didn’t seem to be behaving itself at all.

She could feel it in the heavy rush of blood to her breasts and in her restlessness whenever Ariston subjected her to that cool stare, which he seemed to do far more than was necessary. And if that weren’t bad enough, she was having difficulty adjusting to this unexpected social outing. She hadn’t been to a dinner party this fancy for a long time and she’d never really done so on her own terms before. She’d only ever been invited because of her mother, and this was different. She was no longer watching out of the corner of her eye in case her mum did something outrageous, anxiously wondering if she could get her home without making a fool of herself. This time people seemed to be interested in her and she didn’t want them to be. What could she say about herself—other than that she’d done a series of menial jobs, because they were the only ones she could get after a fractured education which had led to zero qualifications?

She spent the evening blocking questions—something she’d learnt to do over the years—so that whenever she was asked something personal, she turned it around and moved the subject swiftly onto something else. She had become highly accomplished in the art of evasion but tonight it seemed to be having entirely the wrong effect. Was her elusiveness the reason why Santino began to monopolise her for the second part of the evening, while Rachel’s pinched face seemed to indicate she was regretting her impetuous decision to have her join them? Keeley felt like standing up and announcing that she wasn’t remotely interested in the Italian businessman—that there was only one man around the table who had her attention and she was having to fight very hard not to be mesmerised by him. Because tonight Ariston looked amazing—very traditional and heart-stoppingly masculine. His white shirt was unbuttoned at the neck revealing a silky triangle of olive skin, and his tapered dark trousers emphasised his long legs and the powerful shafts of his thighs.

And all the while he was watching her, his blue gaze burning into her so intently that the breath caught in her throat and she was barely able to eat. Course after course of delicious food was placed in front of her, but Keeley could do little more than push it around her plate. Were the other guests amused by her lack of appetite—not realising the cause of it—especially as she seemed almost to be bursting out of Megan’s dress? Did they think she was one of those women who never ate in public but enjoyed secret binges with the biscuit packet whenever she was alone?

‘Enjoying yourself, Keeley?’ asked Ariston softly.

‘Very much,’ she said, not caring if he heard the lie in her voice. Because what else could she say? That she could feel ripples of awareness whispering over her skin whenever he looked at her? That she found his hard and rugged profile the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen and she wanted nothing more than to just sit and stare at it?

She broke the mould of her Cinderella evening by excusing herself long before midnight. As soon as the clock struck eleven she stood up and politely thanked them for a lovely dinner. Somehow she maintained her high-headed posture as she walked away from the terrace but as soon as she was out of sight, she began to run. Along the path leading to the beach she ran, straight past her cottage and down to the shoreline, glad she was wearing her practical sandals underneath the long dress. And glad too that the waves were pounding against the sand so that the heavy sound drummed out the beating of her thudding heart. Picking up the hem of her dress, she stood back, careful not to let the seawater touch the delicate fabric as she stared out at the moon-dappled water.

She remembered how she’d felt when the supermarket had sacked her just before she’d flown to Lasia, when she’d been swamped by the sense of having no real place in the world. She could feel it now—because she hadn’t really been part of that glamorous table, had she? She’d been the outsider who had been dressed up for the occasion in a stranger’s dress. Had Ariston known how alienated she’d felt—or was he too busy reeling her in with his potent sexuality to care? Didn’t he realise that what was probably just a game to him meant so much more to someone like her who didn’t have his tight circle of friends, or wealth, to fall back on?

She felt stupid tears stinging her eyes and wondered if they had been caused by self-pity. Because if they were she was going to have to lose them—and quickly. Count your blessings, she told herself fiercely as she rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. Just be glad you’ve been strong enough to resist someone who could never be anything more than a one-night stand.

But as she turned to walk back towards her cottage she saw a figure walking towards her—a man she recognised in a heartbeat, even from this distance. How could she fail to recognise him when his image was burned so powerfully onto her mind that she could picture him at the slightest provocation? His shadowy figure was powerful as he moved and the glint of moonlight in his eyes and the paleness of his silk shirt captured her imagination. She felt her skin prickle with instinctive excitement, which was quickly followed by a cold wash of dismay as he approached, because she’d tried to do the right thing. She’d done everything in her power to stay away from him. So why the hell was he here?

‘Ariston,’ she said steadily. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I was worried about you. You left dinner so abruptly and I watched as you took the path to your cottage.’ His eyes narrowed as they swept over her. ‘Only no light came on.’

‘You were spying on me?’

‘Not really. I’m your employer.’ His voice sounded deep above the soft lapping of the waves. ‘I was merely concerned for your welfare.’

Her eyes met his. ‘Is that so?’

There was a pause. ‘Yes. No,’ he negated and suddenly his voice had grown harsh. ‘Actually, I don’t know. I don’t know what the hell it is. All I know is that I can’t seem to stop thinking about you.’

Keeley saw the sudden change in him. The tension which stiffened his body, which she suspected mirrored the tension in her own. Just as she knew what was about to happen from the look on his face—a raw look of hunger which set off an answering need somewhere deep inside her.

‘Ariston,’ she whispered, but it sounded more like a prayer than a protest as he pulled her into his arms, into the warmth of his embrace, and she let him—ignoring the objections which were crowding her mind. And the moment he touched her, she was lost.

He drove his mouth down on hers and she heard his little moan of triumph as she kissed him back. Her lips opened and he slid his tongue inside her mouth to deepen the kiss. She swayed against him, her fingernails digging into his chest through the fine silk of his shirt, and he circled his hips against hers in a movement which was unashamedly urgent. And now his hand was slipping inside the bodice of her dress so he could cup her braless breast with his fingers and she let him do that, too. How could she stop him when she wanted it so much?

His groan was muffled as he explored each diamond-tipped nipple and she could feel her panties growing moist. Was he going to do it to her now? Here? Push her down onto the soft sand without giving her time to object? Yes. She would welcome that. She didn’t want anything to destroy the mood or the moment, because this had been a long time coming. Eight years, to be precise. Eight long and arid years when her body had felt as if it were made of cardboard, rather than responsive flesh and blood. Keeley swallowed. She didn’t want time to have second thoughts about what was about to happen—she wanted to just go with the flow and be spontaneous. A rush of excitement flooded through her until she remembered what she was wearing and, unlocking her lips from his, she pulled away from him. ‘The dress!’ she stumbled.

He stared down at her uncomprehendingly. ‘The dress?’ he echoed dazedly.

‘It’s not mine, remember? I don’t want to…to mark it.’

‘Of course. You borrowed the dress.’ Something hardened in his eyes as his gaze swept over her and his smile was tinged with a flicker of triumph as he picked her up and walked across the sand towards the cottage, before kicking open the door.

CHAPTER FIVE

ONCE INSIDE, ARISTON carried Keeley straight upstairs in a display of masculine dominance she found intoxicating. As he brushed hungry kisses over her neck and lips she was on such a delirious high of pleasure that she was barely aware of him lifting her arms above her head and peeling off her borrowed dress. Until suddenly she was standing in front of him wearing nothing but a pair of tiny thong panties. Half naked in the silver moonlight, she should have felt shy, but the look blazing from Ariston’s eyes made her feel anything but shy. Tilting her chin, she felt the silky movement of her hair as it swayed against her bare back and a sudden sense of liberation rippled through her as she met his slow and appreciative smile.

‘Theos mou, but you are magnificent,’ he said, his body tensing as he cupped one of her breasts like a market trader calculating the weight of a watermelon.

And even that rather brutal gesture excited her. Every single thing about him was exciting right now—each nerve ending in her body feeling as if a layer of skin had been peeled away, leaving her raw and aching. His voice dipped approvingly as his gaze focussed on her tiny panties. ‘It seems that beneath the often unexceptional clothes you favour, you dress in order to please your man.’ He glittered her a smile. ‘And I approve.’

His arrogance was breathtaking and Keeley wanted to tell him that his words were inaccurate on so many counts. That the tiny briefs were the only thing she could have worn under such a flimsy gown without getting a visible panty line and usually she wore a heavy-duty bra to contain her overripe breasts. But he was playing with her nipples again and it was such an unbearably sweet sensation that she didn’t have the desire—or the strength—to break the fragile mood with stumbled words of explanation. Because during that short journey from beach to bedroom she’d known there was to be no turning back. It didn’t seem to matter if it was right or wrong, it just seemed inevitable. She was going to let Ariston Kavakos make love to her tonight and nothing was going to stop her.

She lifted her gaze to his, watching as he began to unbutton his shirt, his eyes not leaving her face as he bared his hair-roughened chest.

‘Play with your breasts,’ he ordered softly. ‘Touch yourself.’

The words should have shocked her but they didn’t—maybe because he’d managed to turn them into an irresistible and silky command. Should she tell him that her sexual experience was laughably lacking and she wasn’t sure how good she would be? But if she was going to do this, she needed to do it without any hang-ups. Tentatively, she spread her palms over the aching mounds and began to circle them as he’d demanded, and the weird thing was that once she’d banished her inhibitions, she started to feel sexy. She imagined it was Ariston’s hands tracing erotic movements over her aroused flesh. She wriggled impatiently and her heavy eyelids fluttered to a close.

‘No.’ Another soft order rang out in the moonlit bedroom. ‘Don’t close your eyes. I want you to look at me, Keeley. I want to see your expression when I make you come. And believe me, I am going to make you come, koukla mou. Over and over and over again.’

Keeley’s eyes widened because his words were so graphic. So explicit. She got the distinct impression he was deliberately demonstrating control over her. Was that the way he liked it? To be totally in charge? To tell her what to do and show her who was boss? Her heart started to race because he was naked now, his erection so pale and proud amid the dark curls—and even the daunting dimensions of that weren’t enough to intimidate her. He walked over to where she stood, removing her hands from her breasts and replacing them with his lips, bending his head to kiss each nipple in turn, the tip of his tongue working expertly on the puckered flesh until she let out a small moan of pleasure.

‘I like to hear you moan,’ he said unsteadily. ‘I promise I’m going to make you moan all night.’

‘Are you?’

‘Neh.’ He tangled his fingers in the spill of her hair, anchoring her head so that she couldn’t look anywhere except at him. ‘Do you know how many times I have imagined you like this, Keeley? Standing naked in the moonlight like some kind of goddess?’

Goddess? Was he crazy? A shelf-stacker from Super Save who was carrying too much weight? A wave of hysteria bubbled up inside her. She wanted to tell him not to say things like that but the truth was she liked it. She liked the way it made her feel. And why shouldn’t she feel like a goddess for once when his words were painting pictures in her imagination which were increasing her desire? Because this was probably the way he did it. His method. Sweet-talking her into submission with his practised lines. Telling her the things she longed to hear, even if they weren’t true. Presumably this was what men and women did all the time and it didn’t mean a thing. Sex didn’t mean a thing. That had been one thing her mother had taught her.

‘Ariston,’ she managed, through bone-dry lips.

‘Have you dreamed about me too?’ he murmured.

She supposed it would destroy the mood if she admitted that all the dreams she’d had about him were deeply unsettling. But why destroy the mood with an admission which no longer seemed relevant?

‘Maybe,’ she admitted.

He let out a low laugh of pleasure as he skimmed his hand over her tiny thong. ‘I love that you blow so hot and cold,’ he said. ‘Did you learn long ago how to keep a man guessing?

Keeley bit her lip. His impression of her was a million miles away from the reality, but why puncture the bubble now? He obviously thought she was some kind of man-magnet and surely it would be a waste of time to try to convince him otherwise. Because she wasn’t expecting any future in this. She knew that only a fool would expect a relationship with a man like Ariston, but her heart still clenched as she acknowledged just how fleeting it was going to be. And if his fantasies about her were turning him on, why not play the game? Why not scrabble up what little knowledge she had and work with it?

‘Do you always waste so much time talking?’ she purred.

Her softly spoken tease made the atmosphere change. She could sense a new tension in him as he picked her up and carried her over to the bed, not bothering to pull back the bedsheet as he laid her on it. His eyes were unfathomable as he stared down at her.

‘Forgive me for not recognising your…’ he slid his hand between her legs, pushing aside the panel of her panties with a murmur of acknowledgment as he flicked his finger over her slick, wet heat ‘…impatience.’

Keeley swallowed because now his finger was working with a purpose and she could feel the heat inside her building. She wanted him to kiss her again but the only area he seemed interested in kissing was her torso and then her belly and then…then… She sucked in a shocked breath as he pulled down her panties and moved his head between her legs so that she could feel the tickle of his thick hair brushing against her thighs. Her body was tensed for what was going to happen next but nothing on earth could have prepared her for that first sweet lick. She jerked on the bed and tried to wriggle away from the almost unendurable pleasure which was spiralling up inside her, but he was holding her hips so she couldn’t move. And so she lay there helplessly—a willing prisoner of the Greek tycoon as layer upon layer of pleasure built to such a level of intensity that when it broke it felt like a swollen river bursting its banks and she screamed out his name.

As the spasms slowly ebbed away she felt a delicious warmth seeping through her body and opened her eyes to find him leaning over her, a trace of amusement curving the edges of his lips.

‘Mmm…’ he said softly. ‘For a woman who blows so hot and cold, I didn’t expect you to be quite so vocal. Are you always so sweetly enthusiastic when you come, Keeley—or are you trying to massage my ego by acting like that was the first orgasm you’ve ever had?’

Keeley wasn’t sure how to answer. She wondered if it would be shameful to admit she’d never experienced pleasure like that before and wondered how he would react if he realised just how sketchy her sexual experience was. She licked her lips. Don’t frighten him away, she told herself. Why shatter this deliciously dreamy mood with reality? Tell him what he expects to hear. Be the woman you’ve never dared be before.

‘You shouldn’t be so good,’ she said lazily. ‘And then I wouldn’t be quite so…vocal.’

‘Good? Are you kidding? I haven’t even started yet,’ he murmured.

She swallowed, and suddenly she felt out of her depth. ‘I’m not…’

His gaze lasered into her. ‘Not what, Keeley?’

She licked her lips again. ‘I’m not on the pill or anything.’

‘Even if you were, I always like to be doubly sure,’ he said, his voice hardening as he groped around in the pocket of his trousers until he’d found what he was looking for.

Keeley watched as he slid the condom on and thought how anatomical this all seemed—as if emotion played no part in what was about to happen. She swallowed. Had she really thought it might be otherwise—that Ariston Kavakos might show her tenderness or affection?

‘Kiss me,’ she said suddenly. ‘Please. Just kiss me.’

Ariston frowned as she made her breathless appeal and as he gave himself up to the kiss she’d demanded, his heart clenched. Hell… She was so…surprising. One minute the cool seductress and the next—why, she was almost shy. After making him wait longer than he’d ever had to wait for anyone, she was so sweet in her response. Had she learned at the knee of her mother how best to captivate a man? Had she discovered that keeping them guessing was the ultimate turn-on for men who’d seen everything, done everything and sometimes been bored along the way?

He felt as if he wanted to explode as he stroked her and kissed her and his heart was pounding as he moved over her, sucking in a deep breath of anticipation as, slowly, he entered her. And wasn’t the most insane thing that he was almost disappointed at the ease with which he thrust into her slick, wet heat? Hadn’t he been fantasising about her for so long that he’d allowed himself the ultimate illusion—and hadn’t her wild reaction to her orgasm only reinforced that crazy notion? That maybe she was a virgin and maybe he was the first…

But his insanity lasted no longer than a second before he began to relax and to feast himself on all the soft and curvy flesh which was just there for the taking. She was so hot. So tight. He caught his hands under her thighs and hooked her legs around his back, enjoying her little squeals of pleasure as he increased his penetration. He drove into her hard and harder still, deliberately holding back until she could bear it no longer and called out his name again. And then she just went under, her body arching into a tight bow until she let it go with one long and shuddering cry. And wasn’t this his fantasy? Not some woman she could never be, but Keeley Turner underneath him while he rode her, with those soft thighs tensing as she came all over again. He waited until her soft moans had died away and only then did he allow himself his own release, his heart clenching as the seed pumped hotly from his body and he reminded himself that this was what it was all about. The ultimate conquest of a woman who had been haunting him for years. A farewell to something which should have been finished eight years ago.

He fell asleep afterwards and when he awoke it was to find his lips touching one pouting breast. Barely any movement was needed to take the puckered nipple deep into his mouth and to graze it with his teeth and lick it, until she was squirming beneath him and before he knew what was happening he was inside her again. This time it was longer. Slower. As if it were all happening in some kind of dream. But his orgasm just went on and on and on. Afterwards he rolled onto his back, careful to allow her head to rest on his shoulder because women were very susceptible to rejection at times like this—and although he planned to wave her goodbye in the very near future, it certainly wouldn’t be tonight. But he needed to think about what happened next because this was a situation which would need unusual levels of diplomacy. His fingertip skated a light survey over her belly and he felt her shiver in response.

‘Well,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t think of a more satisfactory end to the evening.’

Keeley nodded, trying not to show her disappointment. Of all the things he could have said and he came out with something like that. Why, he made her feel like an after-dinner brandy he’d consumed! She licked her swollen lips. But what did she expect? Words of admiration and affection? Ariston telling her she was the only woman for him and that he wanted a relationship with her? Of course not. It was what it was, she told herself fiercely. A one-night stand which wasn’t supposed to mean anything. So she rolled away from him, shaking her tangled hair free as she attempted to find the level of sophistication which this kind of situation no doubt called for.

‘Indeed it was,’ she agreed coolly.

There was a short silence for a moment, during which he seemed to be mulling over his words.

‘I’m surprised Santino didn’t try to follow you down here to get to you before I did,’ he said eventually.

It was such a random remark that Keeley frowned as she turned her head to look at him, pushing back a handful of untidy hair. ‘Why on earth would he have done that?’

He shrugged. ‘I noticed how much attention he was paying you throughout dinner.’

‘Did you?’ she said, without missing a beat.

‘I certainly did. And after you’d gone Santino and Rachel left pretty abruptly too. We could hear them arguing all the way back to their room.’

‘And you thought…what?’ she questioned softly as some inner warning system began to sound inside her head. ‘Did you think it was about me?’

‘I suspect it was. Your name was mentioned more than once.’

‘And…what?’ she demanded. ‘Did you think I was hungry for a man, Ariston? Any man? That if Santino had arrived before you that I would be in bed with him?’

‘I don’t know.’ There was a heartbeat of a pause as he lifted his eyes to hers. ‘Would you?’

Keeley froze just before instinct kicked in and she longed to flex her fingernails over his skin and tear at his silken flesh. To inflict some kind of hurt on him—something which might mimic the searing pain which was clamping around her heart. She expelled the breath she’d been holding, bitterly aware of how little he thought of her. But she’d known that from the start, hadn’t she? And had thought, what? That the growing sexual attraction between them would somehow cancel out his obvious lack of respect? That admitting him to her bed so quickly might make him admire her? What a stupid little fool she’d been.

‘Get out,’ she said, in a low voice.

‘Oh, Keeley,’ he said softly. ‘There’s no need to overreact. You asked me a question and I answered it truthfully. Would you rather I told you a lie?’

‘I mean it!’ she snapped. He made to pull her back into his arms but she jumped out of bed before he could touch her. ‘Get out of here,’ she repeated.

He shrugged as he swung his legs over the bed and reached for his trousers. ‘I wasn’t intending to insult you.’

‘Really? In that case, I think you ought to take a good, long look at the things you just said. You think I’m sexually indiscriminate, do you, Ariston? That one attractive man is pretty much the same as any other?’

‘How should I know? You are your mother’s daughter, after all. And I’ve had enough experience of women to know what they are capable of,’ he said rawly. ‘I know just how unscrupulous they can be.’

Keeley reached for the cotton dressing gown which was hanging on a hook on the door and pulled it on, not daring to speak until she had tied the belt around her waist and her naked body was hidden from his gaze.

‘Why did you seduce me, Ariston?’ she questioned in a low voice. ‘When you obviously think so little of me?’

He paused in the act of sliding on his shirt, the movement making his powerful muscles ripple beneath the silk fabric. ‘Because I find you intensely attractive. Because you lit a longing in me all those years ago which never really went away. Maybe now it will.’

‘And that’s all?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

But instinct told her there was something more. Something he was holding back. And suddenly she needed to know, even though she suspected it was going to shatter her. ‘Tell me the truth like you did before,’ she said. ‘Just…tell me.’

His eyes gleamed like silver in the moonlight, before he shrugged. ‘It started out with wanting to have you for myself, for all the reasons I’ve just stated,’ he said in a low voice. ‘But also because…’

‘Because what, Ariston? Please don’t stop now. Not when this is just getting fascinating.’

He zipped up his trousers before looking up. ‘Because I knew that my brother wouldn’t be tempted by you, if he knew I’d had sex with you first.’

‘Which naturally you would have made sure he knew?’

He shrugged. ‘If I’d needed to, then yes. Yes, I would.’

There was a disbelieving silence before she could bring herself to respond. ‘So it was…it was some kind of territorial thing? The ultimate deterrent to ensure that your brother wasn’t tempted, even though there is no spark between me and Pavlos and there never has been?’

He met her gaze unflinchingly. ‘I guess so.’

Keeley felt faint. It was even worse than she’d thought. Briefly, she closed her eyes before going into damage-limitation mode and that was something which came as naturally to her as breathing. The thing she was best at. She sucked in an unsteady breath. ‘You do realise I’m going to have to leave the island? That I can’t work for you any more. Not after this.’

He shook his head. ‘You don’t have to do that.’

‘Really?’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Then how do you see this playing out? Me carrying on with my domestic work while you occasionally sneak down here to have sex with me? Or am I now supposed to abandon my uniform as if this was some bizarre kind of promotion and join you and your guests for dinner every night?’

‘There’s no need to overreact, Keeley,’ he gritted. ‘We can work something out.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong, Ariston. We can’t. There’s no working out something like this. I won’t be treated in this way and I won’t spend any more time in the company of a man who is capable of such treatment. Tonight was a mistake—but we can’t do anything about it now. But I’m not staying here a second longer than I have to. I want to leave tomorrow, first thing. Before anyone is awake.’

He’d finished buttoning up his shirt and the expression on his rugged face was hidden by a series of shifting shadows. ‘You’re aware that you need my cooperation to do that? That I own the airstrip as well as the planes—and no other aircraft is allowed to land or take off from here without my permission. I might not be willing to let you go so easily, Keeley—have you thought about that?’

‘I don’t care what you want, you’d just better let me go,’ she said, her voice shaking now. ‘Because I’m a strong swimmer—and if I have to make my own way to the nearest island, then believe me I will. Or I’ll contact one of the international newspapers and tell them I’m being kept prisoner on the Greek tycoon’s island—I imagine the press could have a lot of fun with that. Unless you’re planning to confiscate my computer while you’re at it—which, I have to inform you, is a criminal offence. No? So get out of here, Ariston—and prepare one of your planes to take me back to England. Do you understand?’

CHAPTER SIX

ARISTON STARED OUT of the vast windows, but for once the travel-brochure views of his island home failed to impress him. He might as well have been in a darkened cave for all the notice he took of the sapphire sea and silver sand, or the neglected cup of coffee which had been cooling on his desk for the last half-hour. All he could see was a pair of bright green eyes and a pair of soft, rosy lips—and pale hair which had trickled through his fingers like moonlight.

What was his problem? he wondered impatiently as he stood up with a sudden jerking movement which made the cup rattle. Why did he persist in feeling so unsettled when all should have been well in his world? Weeks had passed since Keeley Turner had fallen eagerly into his arms during a sexual encounter which had blown his mind but ended badly. She had flown back to London the next morning, refusing to meet his eye and saying nothing other than a tight-lipped goodbye before turning her back on him. But she had taken the money he’d given her, hadn’t she? Had shown no qualms about accepting the additional sum he had included. He’d thought he might receive an angry email telling him what he could do with his money—wasn’t that what he’d hoped might happen?—along with some furious tirade suggesting he might be offering payment for services rendered. But no. She was a woman, wasn’t she—and what woman would ever turn down the offer of easy money?

And that had been that. He hadn’t heard from her since. He told himself that was a good thing—that he had achieved what he had set out to achieve and bedded a woman whose memory had been haunting him for years. But infuriatingly, little had changed. In fact, it seemed a whole lot worse. Surely by now he shouldn’t still be thinking about her, or the way it had felt to press his lips to her pulsating heat as she had orgasmed right into his mouth. Was it because he wasn’t used to a woman walking away from him, or because he couldn’t help admiring the tempestuous show of spirit she had displayed when she had stormed away? Or just because she’d been the hottest lover he’d ever had?

But after yet another disturbed night he found himself wondering where was the closure he’d been chasing and why he hadn’t tried a little harder to keep her here a bit longer, so he could have got her out of his system. Should he have softened his answers to her questions with a little diplomacy and told her what she wanted to hear, instead of giving it to her straight? His mouth hardened. It didn’t matter. He didn’t like lies and it was too late to go back over that now. What was done was done.

At least Pavlos had announced his engagement to the beautiful Marina, with a wedding planned for early next year. His brother was happy—he’d called him just last night from Melbourne and told him so, and Ariston felt as if his work was done. That all was well within the Kavakos dynasty—its future now ensured…if only this damned disquiet would leave him.

But it didn’t leave him, despite a schedule spent travelling across much of Southeast Asia—and although he threw himself into his work even more single-mindedly than usual, he remained as unsettled as ever. Which was why he found himself making an unplanned trip to England on his private jet, telling himself it was always useful to pay an unexpected visit to his London office because it kept his staff on their toes. And besides, he liked London. He kept a fully staffed apartment there which he used at different times during the year—often when the summer heat of Lasia was at its most intense. But even in London he found himself struggling to concentrate on his latest shipbuilding project or enjoy the fact that the company had been featured in the prestigious Forbes magazine in a flattering article praising his business acumen.

He told himself it was curiosity—or maybe courtesy—which made him decide to call on Keeley, to see how she was doing. Maybe she’d calmed down enough to be civil to him. He felt the beat of anticipation. Maybe even more.

He had his car drop him down the road from her bedsit and when he knocked on the door, the long silence which followed made him think nobody was home. A ragged sigh escaped from his lungs. So that was that. He could leave a note, which he suspected would find its way straight into the bin. He could try calling but something told him that if she saw his name on the screen, she wouldn’t pick up. And that had never happened to him before either.

But then the door opened a little and there was Keeley’s face peering out at him through the narrow crack—her expression telling him he was the last person she had expected to see. Or wanted to see. His eyes narrowed because she looked terrible. Her blonde hair hung in limp strands as if it hadn’t been washed in days, her face was waxy white and she had deep shadows beneath her eyes. He’d never seen a woman who had paid such scant attention to her appearance—but then he’d never made an impromptu call like this before. ‘Hello, Keeley,’ he said quietly.

Keeley stiffened, her knuckles tightening over the doorknob as she stared into Ariston’s searing blue eyes and a wave of horror washed over her. What in heavens name was he doing here—and how was she going to deal with it? Her instinct was to slam the door in his face but she’d tried that once before without success and, besides, she couldn’t do that, could she? Not in the circumstances. She might despise him but she needed to talk to him and it just so happened that fate had scheduled that unwanted prospect without her having to arrange it herself. She found herself wishing she’d had time to brush her hair or put on clothes she hadn’t fallen asleep in, but maybe it was better this way. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about him making a pass at her when she looked like this. Why, he must be wondering what had possessed him to take someone like her to his bed.

‘You’d better come in,’ she said.

He looked surprised at the invitation and she understood why. After the way they’d parted he must have thought she’d never want to see him again. But no matter how much she wished that could be true, she couldn’t turn him away—just as she couldn’t turn the clock back. She had to tell him. It was her duty to tell him.

Before he worked it out for himself.

‘So what brings you here today, Ariston?’ she said, once they were standing facing each other in the claustrophobically small sitting room. ‘Let me guess… Pavlos is back in London and you’ve decided to check whether or not I’ve got my greedy hooks in him. Well, as you can see—I’m here on my own.’

He gave a short shake of his head. ‘Pavlos is engaged to be married.’

‘Wow,’ she said, feeling winded though she wasn’t sure why. ‘Congratulations. So you got what you wanted.’

He shrugged. ‘My wish to see my brother happily settled with a suitable partner has been fulfilled, yes.’

‘But if Pavlos is safe from my supposed clutches, then what brings you to New Malden?’ She frowned. ‘An area like this isn’t exactly a billionaire’s stomping ground, is it? And I don’t recall leaving anything behind on your island which might need “returning”.’

‘I was in London and I thought I’d drop by to see how you are.’

‘How very touching. Do you do that with all your ex-lovers?’

His mouth hardened. ‘Not really. But then, none of my lovers have ever walked out on me like that.’

‘Oh, dear. Is your ego feeling battered?’

‘I wouldn’t go quite that far,’ he said drily.

‘So now you’ve seen how I am.’

‘Yes. And I don’t like what I see. What’s the matter, Keeley?’ His frowning blue gaze stayed fixed on her face. ‘You look sick.’

Keeley swallowed. So here it was. He’d given her the perfect opportunity to tell him her life-changing news. She was surprised he hadn’t worked it out for himself and if he’d bothered to look harder at her baggy shirt, he might have noticed the faint curve of her belly beneath. She opened her mouth to tell him but something made her hesitate. Was it self-preservation? The sense that once she told him nothing was ever going to be the same?

‘I have been sick,’ she admitted, before the words came out in a bald rush. ‘Actually, I’m pregnant.’

He didn’t catch on, not straight away—or if he did, he didn’t show it.

‘Congratulations,’ he said evenly. ‘Who’s the father?’

It was a reaction she should have anticipated but stupidly she hadn’t and Keeley felt hurt. She wanted to tell him that only one man could possibly be the father but he probably wouldn’t believe her and why should he? She hadn’t exactly acted with any restraint where he was concerned, had she? She’d fallen into his arms—not once, but twice and made it clear she’d wanted sex with him. Why wouldn’t a chauvinist like Ariston Kavakos imagine she behaved like that all the time? She licked her lips.

‘You are,’ she said baldly. ‘You’re the father.’

His face showed no reaction other than a sudden coldness which turned his eyes into sapphire ice. ‘Excuse me?’

Was he expecting his cool question to prompt her into admitting that she’d made a mistake, and he wasn’t going to be a daddy after all? That she was trying it on because he was so wealthy? The temptation to do just that and make him go away was powerful, but her conscience was more powerful still. Because he was the father—there was no getting away from that and the important thing was how she dealt with it. Suddenly, Keeley knew that, despite her morning sickness and ever-present sensation of feeling like a cloth which had been wrung out to dry, she now needed to be strong. Because Ariston was strong. And he was a dominant male who would ride roughshod over her to get what it was he wanted, if she let him.

‘You heard me,’ she said quietly. ‘You’re the father.’

His face darkened as he studied her and suddenly she got an idea of just how formidable an opponent he might be in the boardroom.

‘How do you know it’s mine?’

She flinched. ‘Because you’re the only one it could be.’

‘I only have your word for that, Keeley. You were no virgin.’

‘Neither were you.’

He gave a cruel smile. ‘Like I told you—it’s different for men.’

‘You think I would lie about something like this?’

‘I don’t know—that’s the thing. I know very little about you. But I’m a wealthy man. There are undoubted benefits to getting pregnant by someone like me. So was it an accident, or did you plan it?’

‘Plan it? You think I deliberately got myself pregnant, just to get my hands on your money?’

‘Don’t look so outraged, Keeley. You wouldn’t believe the things people would do for money,’ he said, his gaze flicking over her coldly. ‘Or maybe you would.’

‘You seem to be very good at dishing out blame, but I’m not going to carry the entire burden.’ She sucked in a deep breath as she walked over to the window sill. ‘I always thought contraception was the joint responsibility of both parties.’

Ariston met her shadowed eyes and was surprised by a sudden wave of compassion—and guilt. How many times had he made love to her that night? His brow furrowed. Just twice, before she’d kicked him out of her bed and announced that she was leaving the island. Had he been careful that second time, or had he…? His heart missed a beat. No. He hadn’t. He’d been so aroused that in his sleepy and already sated state he had slipped inside her without bothering to put on a condom. How the hell had that happened, when he was traditionally always the most exacting of men?

And hadn’t it felt beyond blissful to feel her bare skin against his? Her slick wet heat against his hardness. Had some protective instinct made his mind shut down so that only just now was he remembering it?

His heart was thundering as he watched her, noting the way she had slumped against the window sill. When she leaned back like that he could see the curve of her belly and for the first time noticed that her already generous breasts were even bigger than usual. She was undeniably pregnant—so should he simply take her word that he was the father?

But memories of his mother—and many of the women in between—made him wary. He knew all about lies and subterfuge because they’d been woven into the fabric of his life. He knew what people would do for money. He had learnt caution at an early age because he’d needed to. It had protected him from some of the darker things which life had thrown at him and Pavlos, so why shouldn’t he seek its protection now?

‘You’re right, of course. Contraception is the responsibility of the man and the woman,’ he said. ‘But that still doesn’t answer my question with any degree of satisfaction. How do I know—or you know—that I’m the father of your baby?’

‘Because…’

He saw her bite her lip as if she was trying to hold the words back but then they came tumbling out in a passionate torrent.

‘Because I’ve only ever had sex once before!’ she declared. ‘One man, one time, years ago—and it was a disaster, okay? Does that tell you everything you need to know, Ariston?’

He felt a dark and primitive rush of pleasure. It all added up now. Her soft sense of wonder when he’d made love to her. Her disbelieving cries as she had come. These all spoke of a woman achieving satisfaction for the first time, not someone who’d been around the sexual block a few times. But what if she was lying? What if she was simply using the skills of an actress, learnt at the knee of her mother? His mouth hardened. Surely he owed it to himself to demand a DNA test—if not now, then at least when the child was born.

But her waxy complexion and tired eyes were making him stall and he was surprised by another wave of compassion. He forced himself to sift through the available facts and the possible solutions. Despite her lack of qualifications, she wasn’t stupid. She must realise that he’d come at her with all guns blazing if he discovered he’d been bamboozled by a false paternity claim.

He glanced around the shabby little room, trying to impose some order on his whirling thoughts. Fatherhood had never been on his agenda. He accepted that he was a difficult man who didn’t believe in love, who didn’t trust women and who fiercely guarded his personal space—and those factors had ruled out the forced intimacy of marriage. The desire to carry on his own bloodline had always been noticeable by its absence and he’d always supposed that Pavlos would be the one to provide the necessary heirs to take the Kavakos empire forward.

But this disclosure altered everything. In a few short minutes he could feel something changing inside him, because if this was his child then he wanted a part of it. A big part of it. His heart clenched. For how could it be any other way? Why would he not want to stake a claim on his own flesh and blood? He looked into Keeley’s wary eyes and thought this must be the last thing she wanted—an unplanned baby with a man she loathed. And no money, he reminded himself grimly. Her circumstances were more impecunious than most. So why not offer her the kind of inducement which would suit them both?

‘So when were you going to tell me?’ he demanded. ‘Or weren’t you going to bother?’

‘Of course I was. I was just…waiting for the right time,’ she said, with the voice of someone who had been putting off the inevitable. ‘Only it never seemed to come.’

He frowned. ‘Why don’t you sit down in that chair? You don’t look very comfortable standing there and you really should be comfortable, because we need to talk.’

Her chin jutted forward but she didn’t defy him, though he noticed that she stared straight ahead as she made her way towards a battered armchair. Yet despite her unwashed hair and sloppy grey sweat-pants, Ariston couldn’t help his body from reacting as she walked past him. He could feel the tautness and the tension hardening his muscles and the instinctive tightening low in his abdomen. What was it about her which made him want to impale her whenever she came near?

She sank down onto the chair and lifted up her face to his. ‘So talk,’ she said.

He nodded, sliding his hands into the pockets of his trousers as he looked at her. ‘I don’t imagine you wanted to be a mother,’ he began.

She shrugged. ‘Not yet, no.’

‘So how about I free you of that burden?’

She must have misunderstood him because her arms instantly clamped themselves around her belly as if she was shielding her unborn child and suddenly she was yelling at him. ‘If you’re suggesting—’

‘What I’m suggesting,’ he interrupted, ‘is that I have you moved from this miniature hell-hole into a luxury apartment of your choice. That you are attended by the finest physicians in the land, who will monitor your pregnancy and make sure that you both maintain tip-top health. And after the birth…’

‘After the birth…what?’ she said, her voice dropping to a whisper, as if she’d suddenly got an inkling of what he was about to say.

‘You give up your baby.’ He gave a cold smile. ‘Or rather, you give it to me.’

There was a pause. ‘Could you…could you repeat that?’ she said faintly. ‘Just so I can be sure I haven’t misunderstood your meaning.’

‘I will raise the child,’ he said. ‘And you can name your price.’

She didn’t speak for a moment and he was taken aback by the naked fury which blazed from her green eyes as she scrambled to her feet. For a minute he thought she was about to hurl herself across the room and attack him and wasn’t there a part of him which wanted her to go right ahead? Because a fighting woman was a woman who could be subdued in all kinds of ways and suddenly he found himself wanting to kiss her again. But she didn’t. She stood there, her hands on her hips, her breath coming quick and fast.

‘You’re offering to buy my baby?’

‘That’s a rather melodramatic way of putting it, Keeley. Think of it as a transaction—the most reasonable course of action in the circumstances.’

‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘I’m giving you the opportunity to make a fresh start.’

‘Without my baby?’

‘A baby will tie you down. I can give this child everything it needs,’ he said, deliberately allowing his gaze to drift around the dingy little room. ‘You cannot.’

‘Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, Ariston,’ she said, her hands clenching. ‘You might have all the houses and yachts and servants in the world, but you have a great big hole where your heart should be. You’re a cold and unfeeling brute who would deny your baby his mother—and therefore you’re incapable of giving this child the thing it needs more than anything else!’

‘Which is?’

‘Love!’

Ariston felt his body stiffen. He loved his brother and once he’d loved his mother, but he was aware of his limitations. No, he didn’t do the big showy emotion he suspected she was talking about and why should he, when he knew the brutal heartache it could cause? Yet something told him that trying to defend his own position was pointless. She would fight for this child, he realised. She would fight with all the strength she possessed, and that was going to complicate things. Did she imagine he was going to accept what she’d just told him and play no part in it? Politely dole out payments and have sporadic weekend meetings with his own flesh and blood? Or worse, no meetings at all. He met the green blaze of her eyes.

‘So you won’t give this baby up and neither will I,’ he said softly. ‘Which means that the only solution is for me to marry you.’

He saw the shock and horror on her face.

‘But I don’t want to marry you! It wouldn’t work, Ariston—on so many levels. You must realise that. Me, as the wife of an autocratic control freak who doesn’t even like me? I don’t think so.’

‘It wasn’t a question,’ he said silkily. ‘It was a statement. It’s not a case of if you will marry me, Keeley—just when.’

‘You’re mad,’ she breathed.

He shook his head. ‘Just determined to get what is rightfully mine. So why not consider what I’ve said, and sleep on it and I’ll return tomorrow at noon for your answer—when you’ve calmed down. But I’m warning you now, Keeley—that if you are wilful enough to try to refuse me, or if you make some foolish attempt to run away and escape…’ he paused and looked straight into her eyes ‘… I will find you and drag you through every court in the land to get what is rightfully mine.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

AS SHE PREPARED for Ariston’s visit next morning, Keeley stared at her white-faced reflection in the mirror and gritted her teeth. This time she wouldn’t lose her temper. She would be calm and clear and focussed. She would tell him she couldn’t possibly marry him but that she was willing to be reasonable.

She washed her hair and put on a loose cotton dress and a sudden desire to impose some order made her give her bedsit an extra-special clean—busying herself with mop and duster. She even went down to the local market and bought a cheap bunch of flowers from the friendly stallholder who implored her to, ‘Cheer up, love! It might never happen!’

It already had, she thought gloomily as she crammed the spindly pink tulips into a vase as she waited for the Greek tycoon to arrive.

He was bang on time and she hated her instinctive reaction when she opened the door to see him in an exquisite pale grey suit, which today didn’t make him look remotely uncomfortable. In fact, he came over as supremely relaxed as well as looking expensive and hopelessly out of place in her crummy little home. She didn’t want to shiver with awareness whenever she looked at him, nor remember how it had felt to be naked in his arms, yet the erotic images just kept flooding back. Was she imagining the faint triumph which curved those cruel lips of his—as if he was perfectly aware of the way he made her feel? He can’t make you do anything you don’t want him to, she reminded herself fiercely. You might be carrying his baby but you are still a free agent. This is modern England, not the Middle Ages. He can hardly drag you up the aisle against your will.

‘I’m hoping you’ve had time to come to your senses, Keeley,’ he said, without preamble. ‘Have you?’

‘I’ve given it a lot of thought, yes—but I’m afraid I haven’t changed my mind. I won’t marry you, Ariston.’

He said something soft in his native tongue and when he looked at her, he seemed almost regretful as he sighed. ‘I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this.’

‘Come to what?’ she questioned in confusion.

‘Why didn’t you tell me about your mother?’

She felt the blood drain from her face. ‘Wh-what about my mother?’

His gaze slid over her. ‘That she’s living in a care home and has been for the last seven years.’

Keeley’s lips folded in on themselves because she was afraid she might cry, until she reminded herself that she couldn’t afford the luxury of tears—or to show any kind of vulnerability to a man she suspected would seize on it, as a starving dog might seize on a bone. ‘How did you find out?’

He shrugged. ‘The gathering of information is simple if you know who to ask.’

‘But why? Why would you go to the trouble of having me investigated?’

‘Don’t be naïve, Keeley. Because you are the mother of my child and you have something I want. And knowledge is power,’ he added as his sapphire eyes bored into her. ‘So what happened? How come a middle-aged woman has ended up living in an institution where the average age is eighty, unable to recognise her only daughter when she visits?’

Without thinking, Keeley grabbed the arm of the nearest chair before sinking into it before her legs gave way, as they were threatening to. ‘Didn’t your investigators tell you?’ she questioned hoarsely. ‘Didn’t they gain access to her medical records and tell you everything you needed to know?’

‘No—they didn’t. I don’t think it’s morally right to do something like that.’

‘How dare you talk to me about morals?’ she bit back. ‘I’m surprised you even know the definition of the word.’

‘So what happened, Keeley?’ he questioned again, more softly this time.

She wanted to tell him it was none of his business but she suspected that wouldn’t deter him. And maybe it was his business now, she realised, with a wrench to her heart. Because her mother was the grandmother of his child, wasn’t she? Even if she would never realise that fact for herself. A sudden wave of sadness engulfed her and she blinked away another hint of tears before he could see them. ‘So what do you want to know?’ she questioned.

‘Everything.’

Everything. That was a tall order. Keeley leant her head back against the chair but it took a couple of moments before she had composed herself enough to speak. ‘I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you my mother’s fleeting fame as an actress was quickly replaced by the notorious reputation she gained after that…’ she stumbled on the words ‘…that summer at your house.’

His mouth hardened, but he didn’t comment. ‘Go on.’

‘When we arrived back in England she was approached by lots of tabloid newspapers and the tackier end of the magazine market. They wanted her to be a torch-bearer for the older woman who was determined to have a good sex life, but in reality they just wanted a gullible fool who could shift a few extra copies in a dwindling retail market.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘She talked at length about her different lovers—most of whom were considerably younger. Well, you already know that. She thought she was striking a blow for women’s liberation but, in reality, everyone was laughing at her behind her back. But she didn’t notice and she certainly didn’t let it deter her. And then her looks began to fade…quite dramatically. Too much wine and sun. One crash diet too many.’

She stopped.

‘Don’t stop now,’ he said.

His voice was almost gentle and Keeley wanted to tell him not to talk that way. She’d misinterpreted his kindness once before and she wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. She wanted to tell him that she could deal with him better when he was being harsh and brutal.

She shrugged. ‘She started having surgery. A nip here and a tuck there. One minute it was an eyebrow job and the next she was having goodness knows what pumped into her lips. She started to look…’ She closed her eyes as she remembered the cruelty of the newspapers which had once courted her mother so assiduously. The snatched photos which had been only marginally less flattering than the awful ones she’d still insisted on posing for, usually dressed in something cringe-makingly unsuitable—like leather hot pants and a see-through blouse. How quickly she had become a national laughing stock—her face resembling a cruel parody of youth.

And how ultimately frustrating that she had been too blind to see what was happening to her.

‘She started to look bizarre,’ she continued, not wanting to appear disloyal but now the words seemed to be rushing to get out because she’d never talked about it before. She’d kept it buttoned up inside her, as if it was her shame and her secret. ‘She met this surgeon and he offered to give her a complete facelift, only she didn’t bother to check out his credentials or to wonder why he was offering her all that work at such an advantageous price. Nobody was quite sure of what happened during the operation—only that my mother was left brain-damaged afterwards. And that she never recognised me—or anyone else again. Her capacity for normal living is “severely compromised” is how they described it.’ She swallowed. ‘And she’s been living in that care home ever since.’

He frowned. ‘But you visit her regularly?’

‘I do. Every week, come rain or shine.’

‘Even though she doesn’t recognise you?’

‘Of course,’ she said quietly. ‘She’s still my mother.’

Ariston flinched at the quiet sense of dignity and grief underpinning her words. Maybe it was inevitable that they made him think about his own mother, but there was no such softening in his heart. Bitterness rose in his throat but he pushed it away as he studied the woman in front of him. She looked very different today, with her newly washed hair shining over her shoulders in a pale fall of waves. The shapeless sweat-pants and baggy top were gone and in their place was a loose cotton dress. She looked soft and feminine and strangely vulnerable.

‘Why don’t you tell me what it is you want?’ he said suddenly.

She met his gaze warily, as if suspecting him of setting up some kind of trap. ‘I want my baby to have the best,’ she said cautiously. ‘Just like every mother does.’

‘And you think that living here…’ he looked around, unable to hide the contemptuous twist of his mouth ‘…can provide that?’

‘People have babies in all kinds of environments, Ariston.’

‘Not a baby carrying the Kavakos name,’ he corrected repressively. ‘How are you managing for money? Are you still working?’

She shook her head. ‘Not at the moment, no.’

‘Oh?’ His gaze bored into her.

She shrugged. ‘I found another supermarket job when I got back from Lasia and then I started getting sick. I eked out the money you paid me but…’

‘Then how the hell,’ he persisted savagely as her words tailed off, ‘do you think you’re going to manage?’

Keeley swallowed in a vain attempt to stop her lips from wobbling, before drawing on her residual reserves. She’d overcome stuff before and she could do it again. ‘Once the sickness has improved, then I can start working more hours. If I need to I might have to move to a cheaper area somewhere.’

‘But that would take you further away from your mother,’ he pointed out.

She glared at him for daring to point out the obvious but suddenly she couldn’t avoid the enormity of her situation. She hadn’t even got a buggy or a crib—and even if she had, there was barely any space to put them. And meanwhile Ariston was offering what most women in her situation would snatch at. He wasn’t trying to deny responsibility. On the contrary, he seemed more than willing to embrace it. He was offering to marry her, for heaven’s sake. Whoever would have thought it?

But yesterday he’d wanted her to give him the baby, she reminded herself. To take her child away from her. Because he could. Because he was powerful and rich and she was weak and poor. He’d wanted to remove her from the equation—to treat her like a surrogate—and that was a measure of his ruthlessness. At least if she was married to him she would have some legal rights—and wouldn’t that be the safest place to start from? Staring into the watchful brilliance of his eyes, she repressed a shiver as she realised what she must do. Because what choice did she have? She didn’t. She didn’t have a choice.

‘If I did agree to marry you,’ she said slowly, ‘then I would want some kind of equality.’

‘Equality?’ he echoed, as if it was a word he’d never used before.

She nodded. ‘That’s right. I’m not prepared to do anything until you agree to my terms.’

‘And what terms might they be, Keeley?’

‘I would like some say in where we live—’

‘Accommodation is the last thing you need concern yourself with,’ he said carelessly. ‘Don’t forget, I have a whole island at my disposal.’

‘No!’ Her response came out more vehemently than she’d planned but Keeley knew what she could and couldn’t tolerate. And the thought of the isolation of his island home and of being at Ariston’s total mercy made her blood run cold. ‘Lasia isn’t a suitable place to bring up a baby.’

‘I grew up there.’

‘Exactly.’

There was a flicker of amusement in his brilliantine eyes before it was replaced by the more familiar glint of hardness. ‘Let me guess, you have somewhere else in mind—somewhere you’ve always longed to live? A town house in the centre of Mayfair perhaps, or an apartment overlooking the river? Aren’t these the places women dream about if money were no option?’

‘I haven’t spent my whole life plotting my rise up the property ladder!’ she snapped.

‘Then you are rare among your sex.’ His gaze bored into her. ‘Lasia is my home, Keeley.’

‘And this is mine.’

‘This?’

She heard the condescension in his voice and suddenly she was fighting for her reputation and what she’d made of her life. It wasn’t much, but in the circumstances hadn’t it been the best she could manage? Hadn’t she struggled to get even this far? But what would Ariston Kavakos know of hardship and making do, with his island and his ships and the ability to click his fingers to get whatever he wanted? Even her. ‘I want to stay in London,’ she said stubbornly. ‘My mother is here, as you yourself just pointed out, remember? I can’t just up sticks and move away.’

He rubbed his forefinger along the bridge of his nose and Keeley watched as he closed his eyes, the thick lashes feathering blackly against his olive skin. Was he wondering how he was going to tolerate a life saddled with a woman he didn’t really want, with a mother whose incapacity had been brought about by her own vanity? Was he now working out how to back-pedal on his hastily offered proposal of marriage?

His eyes flickered open. ‘Very well. London it shall be. I have an apartment here,’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘A penthouse in the City.’

Keeley nodded. Of course he did. He probably had a penthouse in every major city in the world. ‘Just out of interest, how long do you think this marriage of ours is going to last?’

‘The tone of your voice indicates that you think a long-standing union unlikely?’

‘I think the odds are stacked against it,’ she said. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Actually, no, I don’t. Put it this way,’ he added softly. ‘I don’t intend for my child to be brought up by any other man than me. So if you want to maintain your role as the mother, then we stay married.’

‘But—’

‘But what, Keeley? What makes you look so horrified? The realisation that I am determined to make this work? Surely that is only a good thing.’

‘But how can it work when it isn’t going to be a true marriage?’ she demanded desperately.

‘Says who? Perhaps we could learn to get along together. Something which might work if we put our minds to it. I have no illusions about marriage and my expectations are fairly low. But I think we could learn how to be civil to one another, don’t you?’

‘That isn’t what I meant and you know it,’ she said, her voice low.

‘Are you talking about sex?’ A trace of sardonic amusement crept into his tone. ‘Ah, yes. I can see from your enchanting little blush that you are. So what’s the problem? When two people have a chemistry like ours it seems a pity not to capitalise on it. I find that good sex makes a woman very agreeable. Who knows? It might even bring a smile to your face.’

Keeley felt both faint and excited at the way he was expressing himself—and didn’t she despise herself for feeling that way? ‘And if I…refuse?’

‘Why would you?’ His gaze flicked over her body. ‘Why fight it when submission is much more satisfactory? You’re thinking about it now, aren’t you, Keeley? Remembering how good it felt to have me inside you, kissing you and touching you, until you cried out with pleasure?’

The awful thing was that not only was he speaking the truth—but she was reacting to his words and there didn’t seem to be a thing she could do about it. It was as if her body were no longer her own—as if he was controlling her reaction with just one sizzling glance. Keeley’s nipples were pushing against her cotton dress and she could feel a newfound but instantly familiar tug of desire. She wanted him, yes—but surely it was wrong to want a man who treated her the way Ariston did. He had used her as a sexual object rather than someone he respected and something told her he would continue to do so. And wouldn’t that leave her open to emotional wounding? Because something told her Ariston was the kind of man who could hurt. Who could hurt without even trying.

‘But what,’ she continued determinedly, ‘what if I decided I couldn’t stomach the idea of cold-blooded sex with a man like you?’

‘Sex with me is never cold-blooded, koukla mou—we both know that. But if you were to persist in such stubbornness, then I would be forced to find myself a mistress.’ His face darkened. ‘I believe that’s what usually happens in these circumstances.’

‘In that parallel universe of yours, you mean?’ she spat back.

‘It’s a universe I was born into,’ he snapped back. ‘It’s what I know. I won’t consign myself to a sexless future because you refuse to face up to the fact that we are having difficulty keeping our hands off each other,’ he said. ‘But I will not insult you, nor feel the need to take another woman to my bed if you behave as a wife should, Keeley. If you give me your body then I will promise you my fidelity.’

And then he smiled, a hard, cold smile which suggested he was almost enjoying her resistance. As if he were savouring the moment until he was able to conquer her. Or defeat her.

‘It’s up to you,’ he finished. ‘It’s your call.’

Keeley’s heart pounded. The way he spoke about marriage and sex was so primitive. He was autocratic and proud and he stirred her up so she couldn’t think straight, but deep down she realised she had no other place to go. She remembered his warning about taking her to court to fight for the baby if she tried to oppose him. Some men might have made such a threat lightly, but she suspected Ariston wasn’t one of them. But women had rights too, didn’t they? He couldn’t force her to remain in a marriage if it wasn’t working. And he couldn’t demand sex from her because it was his marital right to do so. Surely even he couldn’t be that primitive.

‘Very well, I will marry you. Just so long as you understand I’m only doing it to give my baby security.’ She tilted her chin to meet the triumphant fire blazing from his eyes. ‘But if you think I’m going to be some kind of sexual pushover just to satisfy your raging libido, then you’re mistaken, Ariston.’

‘You think so?’ The smile which flickered at the edges of his lips was arrogant and certain. ‘I am rarely mistaken, koukla mou.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘WOW! I’VE NEVER seen a bride wearing red before!’ exclaimed Megan. ‘Is this some new kind of fashion?’

But before Keeley had a chance to answer the woman who’d lent her the ill-fated dress on Lasia, her brand-new husband leaned forward and spoke for her.

‘It’s an ancient Greek custom,’ said Ariston smoothly, his words curling over her skin like dark smoke. ‘Traditionally, the bride wore a red veil in order to ward off evil spirits. But I suspect Keeley has deliberately adapted the look and given it a modern twist by wearing a crown of scarlet roses to match her dress. Isn’t that right, Keeley?’

Resenting his perception even more than the way he’d just butted in, Keeley looked up into the blue blaze of Ariston’s eyes, trying not to react as he slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer, looking for all the world like a loving and attentive groom. How appearances could deceive, she thought bitterly. Because he was not a loving groom—he was a cold-hearted control freak who was positively glowing with satisfaction because an hour earlier he had slipped an embellished golden wedding ring onto her rigid finger. He’d got exactly what he wanted and she was now his wife, stuck in an unwanted marriage he was determined would last.

He dipped his mouth to her ear and she hated the involuntary shiver which trickled down her spine as his breath fanned her skin.

‘Clever you for researching Greek customs so thoroughly,’ he murmured. ‘Am I the evil spirit you’re trying to ward off, Keeley?’

‘Of course!’ she said, curving her mouth into a big smile, because she’d discovered she could do the appearance thing just as well as Ariston. She could play the part of the blushing bride to perfection—all it took was a little practice. And why spoil a day with something as disappointing as the truth? Why not let people believe what they wanted to believe—the fairy-tale version of their story—that the struggling daughter of a notorious actress had bagged one of the world’s most eligible men?

In the back of her mind she’d wondered if her past might catch up with her and if Ariston would have second thoughts about marrying a woman with a history like hers. Yet when a newspaper had regurgitated the old story of Keeley’s mother cavorting on the back seat of the ministerial limo and asked Ariston whether the tawdry behaviour of his new mother-in-law gave him any cause for concern, he had broken the habit of a lifetime and given them a quote: ‘Old news,’ he’d commented, in a bored and velvety drawl. ‘And old news is so dull, don’t you think?’

Which was kind of ironic when Keeley thought about how much fuss he’d made about what had happened in the past. But she supposed her pregnancy changed everything. It made him overlook her mother’s transgressions. It made him act proprietorially towards her, something which he made no attempt to hide. She could feel him stroking his finger across the front of her scarlet dress, lingering lightly over the curve of her belly as if it was his right to do so. And she guessed it was. Because he was pulling the strings now, wasn’t he? Certainly the purse strings. He had given her a brand-new credit card and told herself to buy what she liked—to transform herself into the woman who would soon become his wife. ‘Because I want you to look like my wife from now on.’ His eyes had glittered like blue ice as he had spoken. ‘Not some little supermarket stacker who just happens to be wearing my ring.’

His remark had riled her and she’d been tempted to wear her oldest clothes all the time and see how he liked that. Would such defiance make him eager to be rid of her and thus grant her the freedom she craved? But then she thought about her baby…and the fact that she was soon going to be a mother. Did she really want to be seen pushing her buggy around the fancy places which Ariston frequented, wearing clothes which had come from the thrift shop? Wouldn’t that whittle away at her confidence even more?

But the disturbing thing was that once she’d started, she’d found it surprisingly easy to spend her billionaire fiancé’s money. Perhaps there was more of her mother in her than she’d thought. Or maybe she’d just forgotten the lure of wealth and how it could make people do unpredictable things. During her childhood when they’d been flush, money had trickled through her mother’s fingers like sand and sometimes, if she’d been feeling especially benevolent, she had spent some of it on her only child. But her gifts had always failed spectacularly. Keeley had been given impractical frilly dresses which had made her stand out from the other little girls in their dungarees. There had been those frivolous suede shoes, ruined by their first meeting with a puddle—and ribbons which had made her look like some throwback to an earlier age. No wonder she’d grown up to be such a tomboy.

But she took to her new credit card like a duck to water, shopping for her imminent role as Ariston’s wife with enthusiasm and allowing herself to be influenced by the friendly stylist who had been assigned to her by the fancy department store. She bought new clothes chosen specially to accommodate her growing frame, as well as new underwear, shoes and handbags. And didn’t she enjoy the feeling of silk and cashmere brushing against her skin instead of the scratchy qualities of the man-made fabrics she’d worn up till then? She told herself she was only doing what she’d been instructed to do, but the speculative rise of Ariston’s dark eyebrows when his driver had staggered into the City apartment under the weight of all those shiny shopping bags had left her feeling…uncomfortable. As if she’d just affirmed some of his deeply held prejudices about women.

But money was liberating, she realised. It gave her choices which had previously been lacking in her life and that newfound sense of liberation encouraged her to buy the scarlet silk dress and matching shoes, secretly enjoying the stylist’s shocked reaction when she explained it was for her wedding day.

‘You’re some kind of scarlet woman, are you?’ the woman had joked drily.

And now, at the small but glittering reception, Keeley realised that Ariston’s hold on her had changed and he was pushing her away by a fraction so his gaze could rake over her, those smouldering blue eyes taking in every centimetre of the scarlet silk which was clinging to her curves.

‘Spectacular,’ he murmured. ‘Quite…spectacular.’

She felt exposed—almost naked—which hadn’t been her intention at all. She felt aroused, too—and surely that was even more dangerous. She tilted her chin defiantly, trying to swamp the sudden rush of desire which was making her skin grow heated and her nipples hard. ‘So you approve of my wedding dress?’

‘How could I not approve? It would have been entirely inappropriate for such an obviously pregnant wife to wear virginal white.’ He gave a slow smile. ‘Yet despite your unconventional colour choice and what I suspect was your intention to rile me, let me tell you that you really do make a ravishing bride, Keeley. Glowing, young and intensely fecund.’

‘I’ll… I’ll take that as a compliment,’ she stumbled, the tone of his voice making her momentarily breathless.

‘That’s what it was intended to be.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘So how are you feeling, wife?’

Keeley wasn’t quite sure how to answer, because the truth was complex—and strange. For the first time in her life she actually felt safe—and cosseted. She realised that Ariston would never let anyone harm her. That he would use his strength to protect her, no matter what. But he wasn’t doing it for her, she reminded herself. He was doing it because she was carrying the most precious of cargoes, and as custodian of his unborn child she merited his care and attention. That was why he was suddenly being so considerate—and if she read anything more into it than that, then she would be embarking down a very perilous road.

‘I’m a little tired,’ she admitted. ‘It’s been a long day and I wasn’t expecting it to be such…such an occasion.’

He frowned. ‘You want to skip the meal and go home?’

‘How can I? It wouldn’t look very good if the bride didn’t turn up for her own wedding breakfast.’

‘You think I care?’ He reached out to stroke his fingertips beneath her eyes. ‘Your welfare supersedes everything.’

‘No, honestly. I’m fine.’ The touch of his fingers was doing crazy things to her heart and as she noticed Megan hovering close by with a camera phone pointed in their direction, something made her want to maintain the whole myth of this marriage. Was it pride? She forced a smile as the phone flashed. ‘Let’s join the others,’ she said. ‘Besides, I’m hungry.’

But Keeley’s reluctance to leave the reception wasn’t just about hunger. She was dreading returning to Ariston’s gleaming apartment as man and wife and not just because she’d found its vast and very masculine interior intimidating. She had been staying at the famous Granchester Hotel while all the necessary pre-wedding paperwork was completed, because Ariston had insisted that they would only share a home as man and wife. Which seemed slightly bizarre since her rapidly increasing girth made a mockery of such old-fashioned sensibilities. But at least it had given her some breathing space and the chance to get used to her new life without Ariston’s distracting presence. She knew she couldn’t keep putting off living with him but now the moment of reckoning was approaching, she was terrified. Terrified about sharing an apartment with him and unsure how she would cope. At times she felt more like a child than a grown woman who would soon have a child of her own. Was that normal? she wondered.

But she pushed her reservations aside as she sat down to the Greek feast which had been provided by the hotel and it was a relief to be able to eat after what seemed like weeks of sickness. She could feel her strength returning as she worked her way through the delicious salads, though she could manage only half of one of the rich baklava cakes which were produced at the end of the meal. Despite the relatively small guest list, it somehow managed to feel like a real wedding and Ariston had even asked if she wanted her mother there. Keeley had been torn by his unexpected suggestion. She had felt a wave of something symbolic at the thought of her mother witnessing her marriage, until a last-minute chest infection had put paid to the idea. And maybe that was best. Even if she had been aware of what was going on around her, what would her mum have cared about seeing her married, when she’d made such a mockery of marriage herself?

Keeley had wondered why Ariston hadn’t suggested a short trip to the register office with the minimum fuss and no guests other than a couple of anonymous witnesses gathered from the street. Wouldn’t that have been more appropriate in the circumstances? But his reply had been quietly emphatic.

‘Maybe I want to make a statement.’

‘A statement?’

‘That’s right. Shout it from the rooftops. What is it they say? Fake it to make it.’

‘By putting your stamp on me, you mean?’ she questioned acidly. ‘Branding me as a Kavakos possession—just like you did the night you had sex with me?’

His eyes had glittered like sunlight on a dark Greek sea. ‘Humour me, Keeley, won’t you? Just this once.’

And somehow she had done exactly that. She’d even managed to smile when he stood to make a speech, his fleeting reference to shotguns getting an affectionate laugh, especially from his brother.

‘It’s funny,’ Pavlos said afterwards, with a bemused shake of his head. ‘Ariston always vowed he would never marry and he said it like he really meant it. I’d never have guessed there was anything going on between you two. Not after that day at the art gallery when you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.’

And Keeley didn’t have the heart to disillusion him. She wondered what he’d say if he realised that Ariston had bedded her simply to ensure that Pavlos would never want her for himself, and that she had been too stupid and weak to resist him. Yet his need to control had backfired on him because he was now saddled to a woman he didn’t really want, though he hid it well. As he raised his glass to toast his new bride, Keeley should have resented his ability to put on such a convincing show of unity—but the reality was a stupid, empty ache in her heart as she found herself yearning for something which could never be hers. He looked like a groom and acted like a groom—but the cold glitter in his blue eyes told its own story.

He will never care for you, she told herself. So don’t ever forget it.

During the drive to his apartment, she tugged the scarlet flowers from her head and shook little bits of confetti from her blonde hair. But she couldn’t shake off her detachment as she and Ariston walked into the impressive foyer of his apartment building, where doormen and porters sprang to instant attention and a few men in suits shot her bemused glances. She hugged her pashmina around her shoulders in a vain attempt to hide as much of the scarlet dress as possible. Why on earth hadn’t she changed into something more sensible first?

A private elevator zoomed them up to the penthouse suite, with its impressive views over many of London’s iconic buildings and its seemingly endless suites of rooms. There was even a swimming pool and a gym in the basement—and the outside terraces were filled with a jungle of plants which temporarily made you forget that you were in the heart of the city. She had been there only once before—an awkward visit to oversee the installation of her new clothes in a large room which was now called her dressing room and where every item had been hung in neat and colour-coordinated lines by Ariston’s housekeeper.

She hugged the pashmina as they stood in a hallway as big as her bedsit, where a marble statue of a man appeared to be glaring at her balefully.

‘So now what do we do?’ she said bluntly.

‘Why don’t you go and change out of that dress?’ he suggested. ‘You’ve been shivering since we left the reception. Come with me and I’ll remind you where our bedroom is.’

Our? She looked up at him. Had he mentioned that to her before, or had she just not been concentrating? Probably not. His housekeeper had been hovering helpfully during her previous visit, so maybe it had only been alluded to. ‘You mean we’re going to be…sharing?’

‘Don’t be naïve, Keeley.’ He glittered her a smile. ‘Of course we are. I want to have sex with you. I thought I’d made that clear. That, surely, is the whole point of being man and wife.’

‘But the vows we made weren’t real.’

‘No? Then we could make them real. Remember what I said about faking it to make it?’ He gave an odd kind of laugh. ‘And don’t widen your eyes at me like that, koukla mou. You look like one of those women in an old film who has been tied to the railway line and only just noticed the train approaching. I don’t intend behaving like a caveman, if that’s what concerns you.’

‘But you said—’

‘I said I wanted to have sex with you. And I do. But it has to be consensual. You would need to give yourself to me wholeheartedly—and consciously,’ he added with a cool smile. ‘I’m not talking about one of those middle-of-the-night encounters, where two bodies collide…and before you know it we’re having mind-blowing sex without a single word being exchanged.’

‘You mean…’ the tip of her tongue snaked over her top lip as she followed him along the corridor, to a room which contained a vast bed which reminded her of a sacrificial altar ‘…like the night our child was conceived?’

He gave a short laugh. ‘That’s exactly what I mean. But this time I want us both to be fully aware of what’s happening.’ There was a pause as he turned around to face her. ‘Unless silent submission is what secretly turns you on?’

‘I already told you—I have practically no experience of sex,’ she said, because suddenly it became important that he stopped thinking of her as some kind of stereotype and started treating her like a real person. ‘I…’ She bit her lip and said it before she had time to think about the consequences. ‘I’d never even had an orgasm before I slept with you.’

He looked at her and she could see a glint of something incomprehensible in his narrowed blue eyes.

‘Maybe that’s the reason why I’m not trying hard to seduce you,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘Maybe I want you to stop staring at me as if I was the big, bad wolf and to relax a little. Your dressing room is next door—so why don’t you get out of your wedding dress and slip into something more comfortable?’

‘Like…what?’

‘Whatever makes you feel good. But don’t worry,’ he said drily. ‘I’m sure I’ll be able to keep my hands off you, if that’s what you want.’

‘That’s what I want,’ she said, seeing his tight smile before he turned away and closed the door behind him. And wasn’t human nature a funny thing? She’d been gearing herself up to fight off his advances, but the news that he wasn’t actually going to make any left her with a distinct feeling of disappointment. She never knew where she stood with him. She felt as if she were walking along an emotional tightrope. Was that intentional—or just the way he always was around women? She undid the side zip of the red wedding dress, trying to get her head around the fact that this vast room with its amazing views over the darkening city was hers.

No. Not hers. His. He owned everything. The dress she stood in and the leather shoes she gratefully kicked off.

But not the child in her belly, she reminded herself fiercely as she walked into the gleaming en-suite bathroom. That child was hers, too.

Stripping off and piling her hair on top of her head, she ran a deep bath into which she poured a reckless amount of bath oil, before sinking gratefully into the steamy depths. It was the first time all day that she’d truly relaxed and she lay there for ages, studying the changing shape of her body as the scented water gradually cooled and she was startled by the sound of Ariston’s voice from the other side of the bathroom door.

‘Keeley?’

Instantly her nipples hardened and she swallowed. ‘I’m in the bath.’

‘I gathered that.’ There was a pause. ‘Are you coming out any time soon?’

She pulled out the plug and the water began to drain away. ‘Well, I’m not planning on spending the night in here.’

She towelled herself dry and tied her damp hair in a ponytail. Then she pulled on a pair of palest grey sweat-pants and a matching cloud-like cashmere sweater and found her way back through the maze of corridors to the sitting room, where the lights on the skyscrapers outside the enormous windows were beginning to twinkle like stars. Ariston had removed his tie and shoes and he lay on the sofa, leafing his way through a stack of closely printed papers. His partially unbuttoned white shirt gave a provocative glimpse of his chest and, with his long legs stretched out in front of him, his powerful body looked relaxed for once. He glanced up as she walked in, the expression on his shuttered face indefinable.

‘Better?’

‘Much better.’

‘Stop hovering by the door like a visitor. This is your home now. Come and sit down. Can I get you anything? Some tea?’

‘That would be great.’ She thought how formal they sounded—like two total strangers who had suddenly found themselves locked up together. But wasn’t that exactly what they were? What did she really know about Ariston Kavakos other than the superficial? She realised she’d been expecting him to ring a discreet bell and for his housekeeper to come scurrying from some unseen corner to do his bidding, just as she’d done on her previous visit. But to her surprise, he rose to his feet.

‘I’ll go and make some.’

‘You?’

‘I’m perfectly capable of boiling a kettle,’ he said drily.

‘But…isn’t your housekeeper here?’

‘Not tonight,’ he said. ‘I thought it might be preferable to spend the first night of our honeymoon alone and without interruption.’

Once he’d gone Keeley sank down on a squashy sofa, feeling relieved. At least she would be able to relax without the silent scrutiny of his domestic staff who might reasonably wonder why one of their number was now installed as their new mistress.

She glanced up as Ariston returned, carrying a tray, with peppermint tea for her and a glass of whisky for himself. He sat down opposite her and as he sipped his whisky she thought about all the contradictory aspects of his character which made him such an enigma. And suddenly she found herself wanting to know more. Needing to know more. She suspected that in normal circumstances he would bat off any questions she might have, with the impatience of a man who held no truck with questions. But these weren’t normal circumstances and surely it wasn’t possible to co-exist with a man she didn’t really know? A man whose child she carried in her belly. She’d humoured him as he had requested earlier in the day, so wasn’t it his turn to do the same for her?

‘You remember asking whether I wanted my mother at the wedding?’ she said.

His eyes narrowed. ‘I do. And you told me she wasn’t well enough to attend.’

‘No. That’s right. She wasn’t.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘But you didn’t even mention your own mother and I suddenly realised I don’t know anything about her.’

His fingers tightened around his whisky glass. ‘Why should you?’ he questioned coolly. ‘My mother is dead. That’s all you need to know.’

A few months ago, Keeley might have accepted this. She had known her place in society and had seen no reason to step off the humble path which life had led her down. She’d made the best of her circumstances and had attempted to improve them, with varying degrees of success. But things were different now. She was different. She carried Ariston’s child beneath her heart.

‘Forgive me if I find it intolerable to be fobbed off with an answer like that.’

‘And forgive me if I tell you it’s the only answer you’re getting,’ he clipped back.

‘But we’re married. It’s funny.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘You talk so openly—so unashamedly—about sex yet you shy away from intimacy.’

‘Maybe that’s because I don’t do intimacy,’ he snapped.

‘Well, don’t you think you ought to try? We can’t keep talking about cups of tea and the weather.’

‘Why are you so curious, Keeley? Do you want something to hold over me?’ He slammed his whisky glass down on a nearby table so that the amber liquid sloshed around inside the crystal. ‘Some juicy segments of information to provide you with a nice little nest egg should ever you wish to go to the papers?’

‘You think I’d stoop to something as low as that?’

‘You already did when you wanted to leave Lasia, remember? Or are you blaming a suddenly defective memory on your hormones?’

It took a moment or two for Keeley to recall her blustering bravado, spoken when she’d been swamped by humiliation and the realisation that he’d had sex with her for all the wrong reasons. ‘That was then when you were intimating that you might not allow me to leave your island,’ she retorted. ‘This is now…and I’m having your baby.’

‘And that changes things?’ he demanded.

‘Of course it does. It changes everything.’

‘How?’

She licked her lips, feeling as if she were on trial, wishing her gaze wouldn’t keep straying towards his hands and wishing they would touch her. ‘What if our little boy…?’ She saw his face change suddenly and dramatically. Saw the same look of fierce pride darkening his autocratic features, as it had done when the sonographer had skated a cold paddle over her jelly-covered bump and pointed out the unmistakable outline of their baby son. For a man who claimed not to do emotion it had been a startling about-turn.

‘What if our little boy should start asking me questions about his family, as children do?’ she continued. ‘Isn’t it going to be damaging if I can’t answer a simple query about his grandma just because his daddy is uptight and doesn’t do intimacy? Because he insists on keeping himself hidden away and won’t even tell his wife?’

‘I thought you said our vows weren’t real?’

She met his eyes. ‘Fake it to make it, remember?’

There was a pause. He picked up his glass and took a long mouthful of whisky before putting it down again. ‘What do you want to know?’ he growled.

There were a million things she could have asked him. She was curious to know what had made him so arrogant and controlling. Why he possessed a stony quality which made him seem so distant. But maybe the question she was about to ask might give her some kind of insight into his character. ‘What happened to her, Ariston?’ she questioned slowly and watched his face darken. ‘What happened to your mother?’

CHAPTER NINE

ARISTON’S HEART PUMPED violently as he looked into the grass-green of Keeley’s eyes. And although deep down he knew she had every right to ask about his mother, every instinct he possessed urged him not to tell her. Because if he told her he would reveal his inner self to her, and that was something he liked to keep locked away.

He understood where his aversion to intimacy stemmed from but was content to maintain that state of affairs. He made the rules which governed his life and if other people didn’t like them, that was too bad. His demanding lifestyle had suited him perfectly and, although his lovers had accused him of being cold and unfeeling, he’d seen no reason to change. He’d been self-sufficient for so long that it had become a habit.

Not even Pavlos knew about the dark memories which still haunted him when he was least expecting them. Especially not Pavlos—because hadn’t protecting his brother been second nature to him and the highest thing on his list of priorities? But here was Keeley, his new and very pregnant wife, her face all bright and curious as she asked her question. And this wasn’t some boardroom where he could quash any unwanted topic at a moment’s notice, or a lover he could walk away from without a backward glance because she was being too intrusive. This was just him and her—a woman he was now legally tied to—and there was no way he could avoid answering.

He stared at her. ‘My mother left us.’

She nodded and he could see the effort it took her to react as if he’d said nothing more controversial than a passing reference to the weather. ‘I see. Well, that’s…unusual, because usually it’s the man who goes, but it’s by no means—’

‘No.’ Impatiently he interrupted her. ‘You want the truth, Keeley? The plain, unvarnished truth? Only I warn you, it’s shocking.’

‘I’m not easily shocked. You forget that my own mother pretty much broke every rule in the book.’

‘Not like this.’ There was a pause. ‘She sold us.’

‘She sold you?’ Keeley’s heart began to slam against her ribcage. ‘Ariston, how is that even possible?’

‘How do you think it’s possible? Because my father offered her a big, fat cheque to get out of our lives and stay out, she did exactly that.’

‘And she…never came back?’

‘No, Keeley. She never came back.’

She blinked at him uncomprehendingly. ‘But…why?’

Behind the hard set of his lips, Ariston ground his teeth, wishing she would stop now. He didn’t want to probe any more because that would start the pain. The bitter, searing pain. Not for him, but for Pavlos—the little baby whose mama didn’t want him enough to fight for him. He felt his heart clench as he started to speak and the bitter words just came bubbling out.

‘I’m not saying my father was blameless,’ he said. ‘Far from it. He’d been brought up to believe he was some kind of god—the son of one of the wealthiest ship-owners in the world. He was what is known as a player, in every sense of the word. At a time when free love was common currency, there were always women—lots of women. From what I understand my mother decided she couldn’t tolerate his infidelities any more and told him she’d had enough.’

‘Right,’ she said cautiously. ‘So if that was the case, then why didn’t she just divorce him?’

‘Because he came up with something much more attractive than a messy divorce. He offered her a king’s ransom if she would just walk away and leave us alone. A clean break, he called it. Better for him. Better for her. Better for everyone.’ His mouth twisted. ‘All she had to do was sign an agreement saying that she would never see her two sons again.’

‘And she…signed it?’

‘She did,’ he affirmed grimly. ‘She signed on the dotted line and went to live a new life in America, and that was the last we ever saw of her. Pavlos was…’

There was a pause and when he spoke it was in a voice devoid of all nuance. A voice, thought Keeley, which was enough to break your heart in two.

‘Just a baby,’ he finished.

‘And you?’

‘Ten.’

‘So what happened? I mean, after she’d gone.’

He stood up, picking up his papers and stacking them on a nearby table, carefully aligning all the corners into a neat pile before answering her question. ‘My father was busy celebrating the completion of what to him seemed like the perfect deal—being completely rid of an irritant of an ex-wife. In his absence he employed a series of nannies to look after us, but none of them could take the place of our mother. Even though I was a child I suspected that most of them had been chosen on account of their looks, rather than their ability to look after a confused and frightened little baby.’

He stared into space. ‘I was the one who took care of Pavlos, right from the start. He was my responsibility. I wasn’t going to risk anyone else getting close to him and leaving him again. So I bathed him and changed his nappies. I taught him how to swim and to fish. I taught him everything I knew—everything that was decent and good—because I wanted him to grow up to be a normal little boy. And when the time was right, I insisted he go to school in Switzerland because I wanted him as far away from my father’s debauched lifestyle as possible. That’s why I encouraged him to become a mariner afterwards, because when you’re away at sea you don’t get influenced or seduced by wealth. There’s nothing around you but the wind and the ocean and the wildness of nature.’

And suddenly Keeley understood a lot more about Ariston Kavakos. What had seemed like an overprotective attitude towards his younger brother and his need to control now became clear, because as a child he had seen their lives dissolve into total chaos. That explained his reaction when he’d seen her with Pavlos because for him she had been her mother’s child, and a harmful influence. He must have seen all his hard work threatened—his determination that Pavlos should have a decent, normal life about to go up in smoke.

And she understood why he had threatened to fight her for their child too, no matter how ruthless that might seem. Because Ariston didn’t actually like women, and who could blame him? He was under no illusion that women were automatically the better parent who deserved to keep the child in the event of any split. He had seen a mockery made of the so-called maternal bond. He’d fought to protect his own flesh and blood in the shape of Pavlos, she realised—and he would do exactly the same for their own son.

Yet could his mother have been all bad? Wasn’t he in danger of seeing only one side of the story? ‘Maybe she couldn’t have withstood your father’s power if she’d attempted to fight for custody,’ she ventured.

His voice was like stone. ‘She could at least have tried. Or she could have visited. Wrote a letter. Made a phone call.’

‘She wasn’t depressed?’ she said desperately, casting around for something—anything—to try to understand what could have motivated a woman to leave her baby behind like that. And her ten-year-old son, she reminded herself. Who had grown into the man who stood before her. The powerful man whose heart was made of stone. Had everyone been so busy looking out for the motherless little baby, that they’d forgotten his big brother must also be lost and hurting?

‘No, Keeley, she wasn’t depressed. Or if she was she hid it well behind her constant round of partying. I wrote to her once,’ he said. ‘Just before Pavlos’s fifth birthday. I even sent a photo of him, playing with a sandcastle we’d built together on Assimenos beach. Maybe I thought that the cute little image might bring her back. Maybe I was still labouring under the illusion that deep down she might have loved him.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. The letter was returned to me, unopened. And a couple of weeks later we found out that she’d taken a bigger dose of heroin than usual.’ His voice faltered by a fraction and when he spoke again it was tinged with contempt. ‘They found her on the bathroom floor with a syringe in her arm.’

Keeley rubbed her hands together, as if that would remove the sudden chill which had iced over her skin. She wasn’t surprised when Ariston suddenly walked over to the window, his powerful body tense and alert, his broad shoulders looking as if he were carrying the weight of the world upon them. She wondered if he was really interested in gazing out at the tall skyscrapers, or whether he just didn’t want to expose any more of the pain which had flashed across his shuttered features despite his obvious attempt to keep it at bay.

‘Poor woman,’ she said quietly.

He turned back to face her; his habitual composure was back and his eyes were as cold as a winter sea.

‘You defend her? You defend the indefensible?’ he iced out. ‘Do you think that everybody has a redeeming feature, Keeley? Or just if it happens to be a member of your own sex?’

‘I was just trying to see it from a different perspective, that’s all.’ She sucked in a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry about what happened to you and to Pavlos.’

‘Save your words.’ He began to walk across the vast sitting room towards her. ‘I didn’t tell you because I wanted your sympathy.’

‘No?’ A shiver ran down the length of her spine as he approached. ‘Then why did you tell me?’

He had reached her now and Keeley’s breath caught in her throat because he was close. Close enough to touch—and she wanted him to touch her. So much. He was towering over her and she could detect the anger simmering darkly from his powerful frame.

‘So that you recognise what is important to me,’ he husked. ‘And understand why I will never let my child go.’

She looked up at him, her heart beginning to pound. Yes, she could understand that perfectly, but where did that leave her? Old sins cast long shadows—was she to be punished for the sins of his mother? Would she be simply another woman for him to despise and mistrust—another woman to regard with suspicion? He’d told her unequivocally he wouldn’t tolerate a sexless marriage and would take a mistress if he was forced to do so. But he had also promised her his fidelity if she took him as her lover, and she believed him. Why was that? Because she wanted to believe the best in people, or because she was empty and aching and wanted to reach out to him in the only way she suspected he would let her?

She shifted her gaze from the distraction of his handsome face to the hands which were clasped tightly in her lap. She studied the shiny golden ring which sat beneath the gleaming diamonds of her hastily bought engagement ring and thought about what those bands signified. Possession, mainly—but so far there had been no physical possession. He’d put his arm around her after the ceremony but that had been done purely for show. Yet despite everything she wanted him. Maybe even more than ever before—because didn’t the things he’d told her just now make him seem more human? He’d revealed the darkness in his soul and she’d come to understand him a little better. Couldn’t they draw closer to one another as a result? Couldn’t they at least try?

She wanted to taste the subtle salt of his skin and to breathe in all his masculine virility. She wanted to feel him inside her again. And it was her call—he’d already told her that. She ran her fingertip over the cold diamonds. She could act all proud and distant and drive him into the arms of another woman if that was what she wanted, but something was making that idea seem repellent.

She snaked her tongue over bone-dry lips, because the alternative was not without its own pitfalls. Was he aware that she was crippled with shyness at the thought of trying to seduce a man as experienced as him? All they’d shared so far had been a mindless night of passion with the sound of the sea muffling their cries. It had happened so spontaneously that she hadn’t had to think about it—while the thought of having sex now seemed so calculated. Was she expected to stand up and loop her arms around his neck—maybe shimmy her body against his, the way she’d seen people do in films? But if she tried to pretend to be something she wasn’t—wouldn’t he see right through that?

‘Ariston?’ she said, lifting her gaze to his at last in silent appeal.

Ariston read consent in the darkened pools of her green eyes and a powerful surge of desire shafted through him. He had revealed more to her than to another living soul and instinct told him it would be better to wait until he had fully composed himself before he touched her. Until the dark and bitter memories had faded. But his need was so strong that the thought of waiting was intolerable. How ironic that this woman carried his child and yet he scarcely knew her body! He’d barely explored the lushness of her breasts or stroked the bush of blonde hair which guarded her most precious of treasures. His heart was hammering as he pulled her to her feet and all he could feel was her soft flesh as she melted against him.

‘A real marriage?’ he demanded, tilting her chin with his fingers so that she could look nowhere but at him. ‘Is that what you want, Keeley?’

‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘Or as real as we can make it.’

But as he pulled the ribbon from her ponytail, so that her hair fell in a pale waterfall of waves, Ariston knew he must be honest with her. She needed to realise that the confidences he’d shared today were not going to become a regular occurrence. He’d told her what she needed to know so she could understand where he was coming from. But she needed to accept his limitations, and one in particular.

‘Don’t expect me to be the man of your dreams, Keeley,’ he husked. ‘I will be the best father and husband that I can and I will drive you wild in bed—that much I promise you, but I can never love you. Do you understand? Because if you can accept that and are prepared to live with it, then we can make this work.’

She nodded, her lips opening as if to speak, but he crushed her words away with his kiss. Because he was done with talking. He wanted this. Now. But not here. He saw her startled look of pleasure as he picked her up and began to carry her towards the bedroom.

‘I’m too heavy,’ she protested, without much conviction.

‘You think so?’ He saw her eyes widen as he kicked open the bedroom door and too late he realised this was the kind of thing that women built their fantasies around. Well, that was too bad. He could only be the man he really was. Hadn’t he warned her what he was and wasn’t capable of? He laid her down fully clothed on the bed, but when her fingernails began to claw at his shoulders he gently removed them. ‘Let me undress first,’ he said unevenly.

His fingers were trembling like a drunk’s as he unbuttoned his shirt and he noted that aberration with something like bemusement. What power did she have over him, this tiny blonde with her moon-pale hair and those green eyes which were forest-dark with desire? Was it because beneath that ridiculous fluffy sweater she carried their child—was it that which made him feel powerful and weak all at the same time?

He saw her eyes dilate as he dropped the shirt to the floor and stepped out of his trousers, yet the kind of flippant question he might usually have asked about whether she was enjoying the floorshow didn’t seem appropriate. Because this felt…different. He felt the hard beat of rebellion. Surely those meaningless vows he’d made earlier hadn’t got underneath his skin?

‘Ariston,’ Keeley whispered and suddenly she was feeling confused—wondering what had caused his face to darken like that. Was he having second thoughts? No. She swallowed. She could see for herself that was definitely not the case, and though she should have been daunted by all that hard, sexual hunger—the truth was that she was shivering with anticipation.

She raised her lips but his kiss was nothing but a perfunctory graze as he slid off the velour sweat-pants and pulled the voluminous sweater over her head, so she was left in nothing but her underwear. And she was glad she’d allowed the stylist to steer her towards the fancier end of maternity lingerie to buy a matching set of underwear which had cost the earth. The front-clipped lilac silk bra clung to her breasts and the matching bikini briefs made her legs look much longer than usual. As his dark gaze raked over her, the look of appraisal on his face made her feel intoxicatingly feminine, despite her shape.

His hand starfished darkly over one breast and as she felt the nipple tighten so presumably did he, because a brief smile curved his lips.

‘I want you,’ he said unsteadily.

‘I want you, too,’ she whispered.

He leaned over to skim down her little bikini briefs. ‘I’ve never had sex with a pregnant woman before.’

Lifting her bottom to assist him, Keeley gave him a reproachful look. ‘I should hope not.’

‘So this is all very…’ he undid the front fastening of her bra so that her breasts came spilling out and bent his head to capture one taut tipple between the controlled graze of his teeth ‘…new to me,’ he rasped.

‘New to me, too,’ she moaned, her head falling back against the pillow.

He took his time. More time than she would have believed possible given his obvious state of arousal. His body was taut and tense as he stroked his fingertips over her skin—as if he was determined to reacquaint himself with this new, pregnant version of her body. And, oh, didn’t she just love what he was doing to her? He palmed her breasts and traced tiny circles over her navel with the tip of his tongue. He tangled his fingertips in her pubic hair and then stroked her until she squirmed. Until every nerve ending was so aroused she didn’t think she could bear it any more. Until she whispered his name on a breathless plea and at last he entered her. Keeley moaned as he filled her with that first thrust and he stilled immediately, his eyes shuttered as they searched her face.

‘I’m hurting you?’

‘No. Not at all. You’re…’ Some instinct made her thrust her hips forward so that he went deeper still—because surely that was safer than telling him he was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen and she couldn’t quite believe he was her husband. ‘Oh, Ariston,’ she gasped as he began to move inside her.

And Ariston smiled because this was a sound with which he was familiar. The sound of a woman gasping out his name like that. He forced himself to concentrate on her pleasure, to make this wedding-night sex something she would never forget. Because a satisfied woman was a compliant woman and that was what suited him best. His self-control was almost at breaking point by the time she shattered around him, her fleshy body spasming with release, and it was only then that he allowed himself the luxury of his own orgasm. But he was unprepared for the way it ripped through his body like a raging storm or for the raw, almost savage sound which was torn from his throat as he came.

CHAPTER TEN

A SOFT GLOW crept beneath Keeley’s eyelids and in those few blurred seconds between sleeping and waking, she stirred lazily. Replete from pleasures of the night and with the musky scent of sex still lingering in the air, she reached out for Ariston—but the space beside her on the bed was empty, the sheet cold. Blinking, she reached for her wristwatch and glanced across the bedroom. Just after six on a Saturday morning and there, silhouetted by the light flooding in from the corridor, was the powerful figure of her husband, fastening his cufflinks. She levered herself up the bed a little. ‘You’re not going into work?’

He walked into the bedroom, one of the cufflinks catching the light and glinting gold. ‘I have to, I’m afraid.’

‘But it’s Saturday.’

‘And?’

Keeley pushed the duvet away, telling herself not to make waves. Hadn’t they just had the most amazing night, with the most amazing sex—and hadn’t those hours of darkness felt like perfect bliss? So what if he went to work when most of London was still fast asleep and getting ready for the weekend? She told herself that Ariston’s dedication to work was the price you paid for being married to such a wealthy man. But it was hard not to feel disgruntled because it would have been nice to have spent the morning in bed for once. To have done stuff like normal newly-weds—moaning and giggling about crumbs in the bed or debating whose turn it was to make the coffee.

But she wasn’t a normal newly-wed, was she? She was the wife of a powerful man who had married her solely for the sake of their baby.

She forced a smile to her lips. ‘So what time will you be home?’

Reaching for his jacket, Ariston glanced across to where Keeley lay, looking delectably rumpled and oh-so-accessible. Her heavy breasts were spilling over the top of a silky nightgown, which somehow managed to make her look even more decadent than if she’d been naked. She must have slipped it on again during the night, he thought, swallowing down the sudden dryness which rose to his throat. A night when she had been even more sensual than usual, her uninhibited response to his first careless advances leaving him deliciously dazed afterwards.

He’d arrived home with an armful of flowers impulsively purchased from a street seller outside his office, a vibrant bouquet which bore no resemblance to the long-stemmed stately roses usually ordered by one of his secretaries to placate her when he had been held up by a meeting. And Keeley had fallen on them with delight, burying her nose in the colourful blooms and going to the kitchen to put them in water before his housekeeper had shooed her away and taken over the task.

His heart clenched as he remembered the soft flush of colour to her cheeks and the bright glitter of her eyes as she’d risen up on tiptoe to kiss him. He had pulled her onto his lap after dinner, playing idly with her hair until she’d turned to him in silent question and he’d carried her off to their bedroom with a primitive growl of possession. Had he once told her that he didn’t play the caveman? Because it seemed that he’d been wrong. And he didn’t like being wrong.

He watched as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ears, the movement making her breasts strain even more against the shiny satin of her nightgown, and he forced himself to look away. To align the pristine cuffs of his shirt beneath his suit jacket as if that were the single most important task of the day.

Was she aware of her growing power over him? A shimmer of unease iced over his skin. She must be. Even someone as relatively innocent as her couldn’t be oblivious to the fact that sometimes he didn’t know what day of the week it was when she turned those big green eyes on him. Perhaps she was trying to extend that subtle power. Perhaps that was the reason for the sudden look of determination which had crossed over her sleep-soft face.

‘Ariston?’ she prompted. ‘Must you go?’

‘I’m afraid I must. Anatoly Bezrodny is flying over from Moscow on Monday and there are a few things I need to look at before he arrives.’

There was a pause as she snapped on the bedside light and pleated her lips into a pout which was just begging to be kissed. ‘You spend more time at the office than you ever do at home.’

‘Perhaps you’d like to dictate the terms of my diary for me?’ he questioned silkily. ‘Speak to my assistant and have her run my appointments past you first?’

‘But you’re the boss,’ she protested, undeterred by his quiet reproof. ‘And you don’t have to put in those kind of hours. So why do it?’

‘It’s because I’m the boss that I do. I have to set an example, Keeley. That’s why you have a beautiful home to live in and lots of pretty things to wear. So stop pouting and give your husband a kiss goodbye.’ He walked over to the bed and leaned over her, breathing in the sexy, morning smell of her. ‘You haven’t forgotten we’re having dinner out tonight?’

‘Of course I haven’t.’ She lifted her lips to his. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’

But he thought the kiss she gave him seemed dutiful rather than passionate, which naturally challenged him—because nothing other than complete capitulation ever satisfied him. Framing her face with his hands, he deepened the kiss until she began to moan and he was sorely tempted to give her what she wanted, until a swift glance at his watch reminded him that his car would be waiting downstairs.

‘Later,’ he promised, reluctantly drawing away from her.

After he’d gone, Keeley lay back against the pillows, blinking back the stupid tears which had sprung to her eyes. What was her problem—and why was she feeling so dissatisfied of late? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known what she’d been getting herself into when she’d married Ariston. She’d known he was a workaholic and he’d never promised her his heart. He’d been honest from the start—some might say brutally so—by telling her he could never love her. And she had accepted that. He was giving as much of himself as he was capable of giving—that was what she told herself over and over. She closed her eyes and sighed. It wasn’t his fault if her feelings for him were changing…if suddenly she found herself wanting more than he was prepared to give. And allowing those feelings to accelerate was fruitless; she told herself that too. She would be setting herself up for disappointment if she kept on yearning for what she could never have, instead of just making the most of what she did have.

So she ate the delicious breakfast prepared by Ariston’s cook and told his driver that she didn’t need him that day. She thought the chauffeur seemed almost disappointed to be dismissed and, not for the first time, she wondered if Ariston had asked him to keep an eye on her. No. She picked up her handbag and checked she had her mobile phone. She mustn’t start thinking that way. That really was being paranoid.

She thought about going to look at the autumn leaves in Hyde Park, but something made her take the train to New Malden instead. Was it nostalgia which made her want to go back to where she used to live? To stare at the world she’d left behind and try to remember the person she had been before Ariston had blazed into her life and changed it beyond recognition? She found herself walking down familiar streets until at last she reached her old bedsit, and as she stood and looked up at the window she wondered if she was imagining the surreptitious glances of the passers-by. Did she look out of place with her quietly expensive clothes and extortionately priced handbag as she chased the ghosts of her past?

She ate lunch in a sandwich bar and spent the afternoon at the hairdresser’s before going home to get ready for dinner, but she was unable to shake off her air of heaviness as the housekeeper let her in. She didn’t know what she’d expected from marriage to Ariston, but it certainly hadn’t been this increasing sense of isolation. She’d known he was tricky and distant and demanding, but she’d…well, she’d hoped.

Had she thought that living together and having amazing sex might bring them closer together? That what had started out as a marriage of convenience might become, if not the real thing, then something which bore echoes of it? Of course she had, because that was the way women were programmed to think. They wanted closeness and companionship—especially if they were going to have a baby. She knew she’d broken down some invisible barrier after he’d told her about the heartbreak of his childhood and she’d prayed that might signal a new openness. After the passion of their wedding night, she’d waited for that openness to happen. And then she’d waited some more.

And now?

Careful not to muss her hair, she pulled a silky black evening dress over her head. Now she was being forced to accept the harsh reality of being married to someone who barely seemed to notice her, unless she was naked. A man who left early each morning and returned in time for dinner. Who slotted in time with her as if she was just another appointment in his diary. Yes, he accompanied her to all her doctor’s appointments and murmured all the right things when they saw their baby son high-kicking his way across the screen. And very occasionally they drove out to the countryside or watched a film together—small steps which made her hope that non-sexual intimacy might be on the cards. But every time her hopes were dashed as those steel shutters came crashing down and he pushed her away—Mr Enigmatic who was never going to make the mistake of confiding in her again.

Ariston arrived home in a rush and went straight to the shower, emerging from his dressing room looking a vision of alpha virility, in a dark dinner suit which matched the raven thickness of his hair. He walked over to the dressing table where she sat and began to massage her shoulders—bare except for the spaghetti straps of her black dress. Instantly she felt the predictable shimmerings of desire and her nipples hardened.

‘Ariston,’ she said huskily as his fingers dipped from her shoulder to caress her satin-covered ribcage.

‘Ariston, what? I’m only making up for what I didn’t have time for this morning. And how can I prevent myself from touching you when you look so damned beautiful?’

She clipped on an opal earring. ‘I don’t feel particularly beautiful.’

‘Well, take it from me, you are. In fact, I’m tempted to carry you over to that bed right now to demonstrate how much you turn me on. Would you like that, Keeley?’

Did the leaves fall from the trees in autumn? Of course she would like it. But using sex as their only form of communication was starting to feel dangerous. The contrast between his physical passion and mental distance was disconcerting and…unsettling. Each time he made love to her it felt as if he were chipping away a little piece of her, and wasn’t she worried that soon there would be nothing of the real Keeley left? That she would become nothing but an empty shell of a woman? She fixed the second earring in place. ‘We don’t have time.’

‘Then let’s make time.’

‘No,’ she said firmly, rising to her feet in shoes which probably weren’t the most sensible choice for a pregnant woman, but this was the first time she’d met Ariston’s colleagues and, naturally, she wanted to impress. ‘I don’t want to arrive with my cheeks all flushed and my hair all mussed, not when I’ve spent all afternoon at the hairdresser’s.’

‘Then perhaps you should skip the hairdresser’s next time,’ he commented drily as he glanced at the elaborate confection of curls piled high on her head. ‘If it puts you in such a bad mood.’

It was one of those stupid little rows which spiralled up out of nowhere and Keeley knew she ought to dispel the atmosphere which was still with them when they got into their car. She wasn’t going to improve matters by sulking, was she? Laying her carefully manicured hand on his knee, she felt the hard muscle flex beneath her fingers.

‘I’m sorry I was grumpy.’

He turned towards her, the passing street lights flickering like gold over his rugged features. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said smoothly. ‘It’s probably just your hormones.’

She wanted to scream that not everything involved her wretched hormones—but she was aware that such a reaction would make a mockery of her words. She stared down at her baby bump instead, before lifting her gaze to his. Why not tell him about what else had been bugging her lately—a practical issue they could address and which might improve the quality of their lives? ‘Ariston.’

‘Keeley?’

She hesitated. ‘Do we have to have quite so many staff?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘I’m not quite sure what you mean.’

She shrugged a little awkwardly and began to fiddle with her jewelled handbag. ‘Well, we have a housekeeper, a cleaner, a cook, a driver and a secretary—as well as that man who comes once a week to water all the plants on the terrace.’

‘And? It’s a big apartment. They all have their necessary roles in my life.’

She didn’t correct him by reminding him that it was her life, too. Choose your battles carefully, she reminded herself. ‘I know that. I just thought that maybe I could, you know…help.’

‘Help?’ He furrowed his brows. ‘Doing what?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Chores. Stuff. Something to make me feel like a real person who’s connected with the world, rather than some sort of mindless doll who gets everything done for her. A bit of cleaning, perhaps. Maybe even some cooking.’ She bit her lip. ‘But when I offered to peel some potatoes for Maria the other day, she acted like I’d threatened to detonate a bomb in the middle of the kitchen.’

He seemed to be picking each word carefully, like someone selecting diamonds from a barrel of stones. ‘Probably because she didn’t think it was appropriate.’

‘And why wouldn’t it be?’

‘Because…’ He sucked in a breath and made no attempt to hide his sudden irritation. ‘You are not on my staff, Keeley, not any more. You are now the mistress of my household and I would prefer it if you acted that way.’

She sat up ramrod-straight. ‘You sound like you’re ashamed of me!’

‘Don’t be absurd,’ he clipped out. ‘But it isn’t possible to flit between the two worlds—you must realise that. You can’t be peeling potatoes one minute, and asking someone to serve you tea the next. You need to be clear about your new role and demonstrate it to everyone else, so nobody gets confused. Do you understand?’

She swallowed. ‘I think I’m getting the general idea.’

He caught hold of her hand. ‘And things will probably settle down once you’ve had the baby.’

‘Yes, probably. At least that’s something I can do,’ she said lightly.

There was a pause as he circled his thumb over her palm. ‘Though we will need a nurse, of course,’ he added.

At first she thought she must have misheard him. ‘I’m sorry?’ she said, but her heart had started to race with some dark and nameless fear as she looked into his face.

‘A nurse,’ he reiterated. ‘A nursery nurse, I believe they’re called.’

‘But…’ She could feel tiny little beads of sweat pricking at her forehead. ‘I thought since you’d been so hands-on with Pavlos, you wouldn’t want us to have any outside help with the baby. Was I wrong about that too, Ariston?’

She saw his face darken. Was he angry at the mention of his brother’s name—for her daring to bring up a subject he had very firmly closed on the night of their wedding?

‘Obviously, you will do the lion’s share but I shall be out at work for most of the day.’

‘And?’ she questioned in confusion as his voice tailed off.

His eyes briefly caught the gleam of lights as the car slid to a halt outside the restaurant. ‘And we will need a nurse who speaks Greek, so that my son will grow up speaking my tongue. For that is vital, given the heritage which will one day be his.’

His words were still reeling around Keeley’s head as they entered the upmarket Greek restaurant—one of very few in central London, or so Ariston informed her as they were led towards the best table in the room. But she didn’t care about the stunning trompe l’oeil walls painted with bright blue skies and soaring marble pillars, which made you feel as if you were standing in the middle of an ancient Greek temple. She was so reeling at this latest bombshell that she could barely take in the names of Ariston’s formidable-looking colleagues or their beautiful wives, who, to a woman, were sleek and dark and polished. She recited their names silently in her head, like a child learning tables. Theo and Anna. Nikios and Korinna.

And of course they all kept slipping into Greek from time to time. Why wouldn’t they, when it was their first language? Even though they seamlessly switched to English to include her, Keeley still felt like a complete outsider. And this was what it would be like when she had the baby, she realised as she stared down at her glass of melon juice. She would be on the periphery of every conversation and event. The English mother who could not communicate with her half-Greek child. Who remained on the outskirts like some silent ghost. She swallowed. Unless she did something about it. Started being proactive instead of letting everyone else decide her destiny for her. Since when had she started behaving like such a wuss? If she didn’t like something she ought to change it.

The men were deep in conversation as Keeley looked across the table at Korinna, who was playing with her dish of apple sorbet instead of eating it.

‘I’m thinking about learning Greek,’ Keeley said suddenly.

‘Good for you.’ Korinna smiled before lifting her narrow shoulders in a shrug. ‘Though it’s not an easy language, of course.’

‘No, I realise that,’ said Keeley. ‘But I’m going to give it my very best shot.’

She was just returning from the washroom when she crossed paths with the young waiter who had been looking after their table all evening, and he moved aside to let her pass.

‘You are enjoying your meal, Kyria Kavakos?’ he questioned solicitously.

‘Oh, yes. It’s delicious. My compliments to the chef.’

‘You will forgive me for intruding?’ he said, in his faultless English. ‘But I couldn’t help overhearing you saying you wanted to learn Greek.’

‘I do. I’m just trying to work out the best way to go about it.’

He smiled. ‘If you like, I could help. My sister is a teacher and she’s very good. She teaches at the Greek school in Camden but she also gives private lessons and is very keen to expand. Would you like her card?’

Keeley hesitated as he offered her a small cream card. She told herself it would be rude to refuse such a kind offer and that perhaps this was an example of fate stepping in to help her. They said that working one-to-one was the best way to learn a new language and this could be an empowering gesture on her part. Wouldn’t it be a brilliant surprise for Ariston if he realised she was making an effort to integrate into a culture which was so important to him?

She would show him what she was capable of, she thought. And he would be proud of her.

‘Thank you,’ she said with a smile, taking the card from the waiter and slipping it into her handbag.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ARISTON LET HIMSELF quietly into the apartment to hear the unmistakable sounds of someone slowly reciting the Greek alphabet. He stood very still. They were coming from the music room, which was situated at the furthest end of the penthouse, and they were being spoken by a voice he didn’t recognise. He frowned as he heard a second voice stumble over the letter omicron—traditionally a difficult letter for non-Greek speakers to pronounce—and suddenly realised that it was his wife who was now speaking. He began to walk along the corridor and the sight which greeted him took him completely by surprise. A beautiful young Greek girl wearing a sweater and a very short denim skirt was standing outlined against one of the giant windows and his wife was sitting near the piano, reading aloud from a textbook. They looked up as he walked in and he saw uncertainty cross over Keeley’s features as her words died away.

The smile he gave was intended to be pleasant but his words didn’t quite match. ‘What’s going on?’ he questioned.

‘Ariston! I wasn’t expecting you.’

‘Apparently not.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘And this is?’

‘Eva. She’s my Greek teacher.’

There was a pause. ‘I didn’t know you had a Greek teacher.’

‘That’s because I didn’t tell you. It was going to be a surprise.’

‘Look, I can see you must be busy.’ Eva was looking at each of them in turn and beginning to gather up a stack of papers before thrusting them hastily into a leather briefcase. ‘I’d better go.’

‘No,’ said Keeley quickly. ‘You don’t have to do that, Eva. There’s still half an hour of the lesson left to run.’

‘I can always come back,’ said Eva in a bright voice which suggested this was never going to be an option.

Ariston waited as Keeley showed the teacher out, listening to the sound of her rapid returning footsteps before she marched into the room and glared at him.

‘What was that all about?’ she demanded.

‘I could ask you the same question. Who the hell is Eva?’

‘I told you. She’s my Greek teacher—isn’t that obvious?’

‘Your Greek teacher,’ he repeated slowly. ‘And you found her…where?’

She sighed. ‘She’s the sister of the waiter who served us the night we went to the Kastro restaurant. He overheard me saying to Korinna that I wanted to learn Greek and so he gave me Eva’s card on my way back from the washroom.’

‘Run that past me again,’ he said. ‘She’s the sister of some random waiter you met in a restaurant?’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘You’re seriously asking a question like that?’ he demanded. ‘Think about it. You don’t even know these people!’

‘I do now.’

‘Keeley,’ he exploded. ‘Don’t you realise the potential consequences of inviting strangers into my home?’

‘It’s my home too,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘Or at least, it’s supposed to be.’

With an effort he altered the tone of his voice, trying to dampen down the anger which was rising up inside him like a dark tide. ‘I’m not trying to be difficult, but my position is not like that of other men. I happen to be extremely wealthy. You know that.’

‘Oh, yes—I know it. I’m never likely to forget it, am I?’ she retorted hotly. ‘What do you want me to do, Ariston—go around checking that Eva hasn’t pocketed one of your precious Fabergé eggs?’

‘Or maybe,’ he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken, ‘maybe introducing you to the Greek teacher was simply a clever diversion and the pretty-boy waiter has designs on you himself?’

‘You think he has designs on me?’ She stood up and gave a disbelieving laugh as she angled her palms over the curve of her belly. ‘Looking like this? How dare you? How dare you say such a thing to me?’

Ariston let her words wash over him but instead of being irritated by her defiance, all he could think about was how ravishing she looked in her anger. Her blonde hair was spilling wildly around her face and her green eyes were spitting emerald fire and automatically he reached out to pull her into his arms. That first contact made her pupils dilate and although she had started beating her hands furiously against his chest, she moaned when he started to kiss her and she moaned some more when he palmed her nipple and felt the tip pushing hungrily against his hand. She kissed him back and her kiss was hot and hard and angry, but the beating of her fists became less insistent. He levered her closer, and jutted his hips so that she could feel just how hard he was and she writhed against him in furious frustration.

Slipping his hand underneath her dress, he felt her bare thigh and as he began to stroke his fingers up towards her panties his desire went right off the scale. Just like hers. He could hear the unsteady rush of her breath as she scrabbled at his belt, and as she slipped the notch free he felt as if he might explode. He was rock-hard and the unmistakable scent of her arousal was in the air as his slowly moving fingers reached her panties to discover they were damp. So damp. He groaned again, and so did she as he pushed the taut panel aside and slicked his finger over her honeyed flesh, confident that sex would dissolve the tension between them as it always did. Couldn’t he show her who was boss and wouldn’t her hungry body accept that, the way it always did? Her arms wound themselves around his neck and he was about to pick her up and carry her over to the chaise-longue when suddenly he came to his senses.

‘No,’ he said suddenly, his heart pounding in protest as he removed her hand from his trousers and pushed her away.

It took several moments before she spoke and when she did she looked at him in confusion. ‘No?’

‘I don’t want you, Keeley. At least, not right now.’

‘You don’t?’ she questioned, before giving a disbelieving laugh. ‘Are you quite sure about that? Isn’t that the way you like to settle any kind of disputes we have?’

He suppressed a ragged groan before forcing himself to step away from her. ‘I’m not making love to you when we’re in this kind of mood,’ he said, his voice thick. ‘I’m angry and so are you, and I fear I might be more…physical with you than I should be.’

‘And?’

‘And that’s probably not the best idea given that you’re pregnant.’

Keeley stared into his shuttered features as desire drained from her body, like water from the bathtub, and in its place came a horrible sinking realisation. Because no matter what she did or what she said—no matter how hard she tried or how long they stayed married—Ariston would always remain in command. She could learn Greek until the cows came home but it wouldn’t make any difference. She could even try to find out more about ship-owning, but she would be wasting her time. Because what she wanted didn’t count. It was what Ariston wanted which counted and it always would, because he ruled the roost and had been allowed to do so for years.

He liked her to know her place and to run everything past him first. He didn’t like strangers in the house and now she knew that, she would be expected to respect his wishes. Her home had become her prison and her husband the rigid jailer. And the reason he didn’t want to make love to her right now was nothing to do with his fears about her pregnancy. The expression on his face was as dark as the time he’d told her about his mother and suddenly she understood why. Because he didn’t like the way she was making him react, she realised.

He didn’t want to lose control or to be seen to lose control.

And she realised something else, too. That if she stayed, she would spend the rest of her life sublimating herself to his desires and his whims. The one thing she had asked for when she’d agreed to marry him hadn’t materialised. They would never be equals—and what kind of an example would that be for her son?

Smoothing her hands over her hot cheeks, she stared at him. ‘I’m done with this, Ariston,’ she whispered hoarsely.

He narrowed his eyes. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘You. Me. Us. I’m sorry. I can’t do this any more. I can’t stay in this…this mockery of a marriage.’

His smile was cruel. She hadn’t seen him look at her that way in a long time, but now she was reminded of the essential ruthlessness which lay at the very core of him.

‘But you don’t have any choice, Keeley,’ he said silkily. ‘You’re pregnant with my child and there’s no way I’m letting you go.’

She met the quiet fury in his eyes. ‘You can’t stop me.’

‘Oh, I think you’ll find I can,’ he said. ‘I have the experience as well as the wherewithal. You have nothing while I have everything. I can get the full weight of any international court to rule in my favour in a custody battle—don’t ever doubt that—though it’s a path I’d rather not take. So don’t make me, Keeley. Why don’t we just calm down and recalibrate?’ He fixed his steely blue gaze on her. ‘Perhaps I was a little unreasonable—’

‘Perhaps?’ she demanded and she realised something else, too. That people didn’t interrupt Ariston. His power had allowed him to build a wall around himself so high that nobody ever dared try. He’d made up all the rules and everyone else was supposed to just fall in and obey them. And everyone always had—until now. She was the only one who had dared to step out of line, but he couldn’t wait to make her step right back in it again. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’ she said shakily. ‘This isn’t a marriage, Ariston. It’s a farce and a prison—and I’m not just talking about your lack of trust or the jailer-like behaviour you’ve demonstrated simply because I had the temerity to invite someone home!’

‘Keeley—’

‘No! You will hear me out. You will. Do you want to hear the reality of what it’s like being married to you? Of how great it really is? You spend long hours in the office—and when you’re back, at best you tolerate me. Guaranteed orgasms and the occasional trip to the theatre don’t add up to intimacy, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, because you don’t want intimacy. You told me that yourself and at the time I thought I could live with it, or maybe even change it—but now I know I can’t. Because you don’t care about me, Ariston—all you really care about is your baby. Sometimes you make me feel like a character in a science-fiction film, someone who is growing your child so that you can take him away from me just as soon as he’s born! As if I’m nothing but a damned incubator!’

‘Keeley—’

‘Will you stop trying to interrupt me?’ she yelled. ‘When I mentioned that we were completely outnumbered by staff and spoke of my desire to help with a little housework, you looked at me as if I was some kind of freak. So what am I supposed to do all day? Haunt the shops like some well-dressed mannequin while I blitz your credit card?’

‘Lots of women do.’

‘Well, not me. If you must know, it bores the hell out of me. I had a brief love affair with excessive spending before we got married, but I’m over it now. It’s an empty, meaningless existence. I’d rather give the money to charity than keep buying more overpriced handbags!’

‘Keeley—’

‘I haven’t finished,’ she continued icily. ‘You speak Greek and I can’t, which means I would always be the outsider—and when I do use my initiative to take lessons, I get accused of having the hots for my teacher’s brother!’

‘I hear what you’re saying,’ he said, sucking in an unsteady breath. ‘And I realise I overreacted. Of course you must have lessons if you want them, but at least let me choose someone suitable to teach you. You can’t just sign up with the sister of someone you’ve bumped into at a restaurant.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because they haven’t been vetted,’ he gritted out.

It was the final straw and it was at that point that Keeley knew there could be no going back. And no going forward either. Her heart was pounding fit to burst but somehow she kept her voice steady. ‘So what am I supposed to do—be stuck in here while you vet anyone I might wish to see? Do you want to build barriers around me as high as the ones you’ve built around yourself?’

‘Now who’s overreacting?’ he demanded.

‘I’m not.’ She shook her head. ‘I thought things might change a little once we were married—but instead of the closeness I foolishly hoped might happen, all I get is anger and suspicion! I feel sorry for you, Ariston,’ she added quietly. ‘To view the world in such a cynical way means you’ll never be happy and that will inevitably spill over into all our lives. And I’m not having any child of mine brought up in an atmosphere like that. I don’t want our son to grow up knowing only distrust and cynicism—or to wonder why Mummy and Daddy never show each other any real affection. I want him to have a healthy view of the world, and that’s why I’m leaving.’

‘Just try,’ he challenged softly.

She gave a nod of bitter understanding as she met his darkened eyes. ‘Is that your way of saying you’ll cut off my funds? Are you going to play the financial tyrant in addition to the emotional one? Would you really go that far, Ariston—after everything you’ve been through yourself? Well, go right ahead—be my guest! But if you do that I’ll go straight to a lawyer and get them to slap a maintenance order on you. Or I’ll sell these.’ She pointed a shaking finger at the cold diamonds which flashed on her fingers, and then at the glittery tennis bracelet which was dangling from her wrist. ‘Or this. Or if need be, I’ll go to the papers. Yes. I’d do that, too. I’d sell my story and tell them what it was like being married to the Greek tycoon. I’d do anything to make sure you don’t take my baby away, no matter how much you offer me to disappear from your life. Because I would never ever walk away from my baby and no amount of money could induce me to.’ She sucked in a deep breath before her next words came out with a quiet intensity.

‘I am not your mother, Ariston.’

She saw him flinch as if she’d hit him, but nothing was going to stop her now. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me,’ she said, her voice trembling, ‘I’m going to pack my things and move out. And if you try to stop me, I’ll… I’ll call the police!’

His expression was unfathomable as their gazes clashed and she knew she’d pushed him as far as she possibly could. All the things she’d said had needed to be said and she’d meant every word of them, but that small glimmer of hope inside her refused to die. Could he read it in her eyes? Could he see the yearning she suspected still lingered there? The hope that maybe this showdown had cleared the air once and for all and he would let her get close enough to be the wife she really wanted to be. To show him all the love which was in her heart and maybe break down some of those formidable barriers he’d erected around his own. She swallowed. He might not ever be able to love her back, but couldn’t he relax enough to like her and to trust her?

But the moment he opened his mouth she knew she had been wishing for the stars.

‘I think, given your current state of hysteria, that you might be better to sleep on it. I will give you some space by moving into a hotel tonight—and hopefully, by morning, you might have calmed down a little.’ His voice suddenly softened. ‘Because getting yourself into this kind of state can’t be good for the baby, Keeley.’

It was the final twist of the knife and Keeley wanted to howl with frustration. And sorrow. That too. She was glad he cared for his unborn son, but suddenly she needed him to care for her, too—and he was never going to do that. Quickly, she turned away from him, terrified he would see the heartbreak on her face or witness the tears which had begun to stream from her eyes as she stumbled her way towards the bedroom.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE OCTOBER SKY was grey and brooding and Ariston was staring into space when the intercom on his desk buzzed and the disembodied voice of Dora, his assistant, spoke.

‘I have Sheikh Azraq of Qaiyama on the line for you on one, Ariston.’

Restlessly, Ariston tapped his finger against the surface of the desk. He had been waiting for the call to confirm a deal he’d worked hard for. A deal which had the potential to increase the company’s portfolio by many millions of dollars. He was about to accept the call when his mobile phone started ringing and he saw the name which was flashing up on the screen. Keeley. He felt the urgent crash of his heart and the sudden tightening of his throat.

‘Tell the Sheikh I’ll call him back later, Dora.’

‘But, Ariston…’

It was rare for his assistant to even attempt to remonstrate with him but Ariston knew the reason for her unusual intervention. Sheikh Azraq Al-Haadi was one of the most powerful leaders of the desert lands and one who would not take kindly to his refusal to accept a phone call which had taken many days of planning to organise. But one thing he knew without a shadow of a doubt was that talking to Keeley was more important. His tapping ceased and Ariston’s hand clenched into a tight fist as satisfaction hardened his lips into a smile. Was she regretting her decision to walk out on him? Finding that life wasn’t quite so straightforward without the protection of her influential husband? Had she realised that he’d been right all along and that his concern about her associates had sprung solely from a need to protect her? He allowed himself a beat of anticipation. He would accept her back, yes, but she must understand that he would accept no similar tantrums or hysteria in the future—for all their sakes.

‘Please tell the Sheikh I will move heaven and earth to arrange another call,’ he said firmly. ‘But for now I have someone else I need to speak to, so don’t disturb me until I say so, Dora.’

He snatched up the mobile phone and clicked the connection, but took care to keep his voice bland and noncommittal. ‘Hello?’

There was a breathless kind of pause. ‘Ariston,’ came the soft English voice which made his heart stab with a strange kind of pain. ‘You took so long to answer that I thought you weren’t going to pick up.’

Something inside him was urging him to make an attempt at conciliation but the anger he’d felt when she had carried through her threat and walked out on him had not left him.

‘Well, I’m here now,’ he said coolly. ‘What is it you want, Keeley?’

The tone of her voice altered immediately and the stumbled apology he had been expecting was not forthcoming.

‘As I’m having private healthcare, my obstetrician has fitted in an extra check-up for me and I’m due for a scan tomorrow,’ she said, her voice now as cool as his. ‘And I thought you might like to come. I realise it’s very short notice and you might not be able to clear your diary in time—’

‘Is that why you left it so late to invite me?’

He heard the unmistakable sound of a frustrated sigh. ‘No, Ariston. But since you haven’t bothered answering any of my emails—’

‘You know I don’t like communicating by email,’ he said moodily.

‘Yes, I realise that.’ There was a pause. ‘I just… I wasn’t sure whether or not you’d want to see me. I thought about sending you a photo once I’d had the scan done, then thought that wouldn’t be fair and so I—’

‘What time,’ he interrupted brutally, ‘is it happening?’

‘Midday. At the Princess Mary hospital. Where we went before—you remember?’

‘I’ll be there,’ he said, before the voice of his conscience forced the next question from his lips. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine. All good.’ He could hear her swallowing. ‘The midwife is very pleased with my progress and I—’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he said, and terminated the conversation.

He sat staring into space afterwards, angry with himself for being so short with her, but what the hell did she expect—that he would run around after her like some kind of puppy? He stared at the sky, whose dark clouds had now begun to empty slanting rods of rain onto the surrounding skyscrapers. After their blazing row he’d spent the night in a hotel to give her time to cool off, returning the following morning and expecting her to have changed her mind. In fact, he’d been expecting an apology. His mouth hardened. How wrong he had been. There had been no contrition or attempt to make things better. Her mood had been flat yet purposeful as she had repeated her determination to move out.

He’d tried being reasonable. He had not opposed her wishes, giving her free rein to move into her own place, telling himself that, if he gave her the freedom she thought she wanted and the space she thought she needed, it would bring her running right back. But it hadn’t. On the contrary, she had made a cosy little nest out of her rented cottage on Wimbledon Common, as if she was planning to stay there for ever. During his one brief visit, he had stared in disbelief at the sunny yellow room, which she had made into a perfect nursery by adorning the walls with pictures of rabbits and such like. A shiny mobile of silvery fish had twirled above a brand-new crib and in the hallway had stood an old-fashioned pram. He had looked out of the window at the seemingly endless green grass of the Common and his heart had clenched with pain as he acknowledged his exclusion. And yet pride stopped him from showing it. He had given a cool shake of his head when she had offered him tea, citing a meeting in the city as the reason why.

She had told him she would be fair and that he could have paternal visiting rights as often as he liked and he believed her, but the idea of living without his son made his heart clench with pain. And yet the thought of an ugly legal battle for their baby had suddenly seemed all wrong.

Why?

Why?

He slept badly—something which was becoming a habit—and he was already waiting when Keeley arrived at the hospital, failing to hide the shock on her face when she saw him.

‘Ariston!’ Her cheeks went pink. ‘You’re early!’

‘And?’

She looked as if she wanted to say something more but smiled instead, except that, as smiles went, it didn’t look terribly convincing. Her mouth seemed strained but he thought he’d never seen her looking more beautiful, in a green velvet coat which matched her eyes and her fair hair hanging over one shoulder in a thick plait.

‘Shall we go up to the scanning room?’ she said.

‘As you wish,’ he growled.

The appointment couldn’t have gone better. The radiographer smiled and pointed out things which didn’t really need pointing out—even to Ariston’s untutored eye. The rapidly beating little heart and the thumb which was jammed into a monochrome mouth. He could feel the salt taste of unwanted tears in the back of his throat and was glad that Keeley was busy wiping jelly from her stomach, giving him enough time to compose himself.

And when they emerged into the quiet London street it felt as if he had stepped into another world.

‘Would you like lunch?’ he questioned formally.

‘I…no, thank you.’

‘Coffee, then?’

She looked as if she wanted to say something important but although she had opened her lips, she quickly closed them again and shook her head. ‘No, thanks. It’s very kind of you but I’m off coffee at the moment and I’m…tired. I’d rather get home if it’s all the same with you.’

‘I’ll have my driver drop you off.’

‘No, honestly, Ariston. I’ll get the bus or the Tube. It’s no bother.’

‘I’m not having you struggling across London on public transport in your condition. I will have my driver drop you off,’ he repeated in a flat tone which didn’t quite disguise his growing irritation. ‘Don’t worry, Keeley. I’ll take a cab. I wouldn’t dream of subjecting you to any more of my company since you clearly find the prospect so unappealing. Here. Get in.’

He pulled open the door of the limousine which Keeley hadn’t even noticed and which had drawn to a smooth and noiseless halt beside them. He was watching her as she slid onto the back seat, the scent of leather and luxury seeming poignantly familiar as she stared into Ariston’s blue eyes—those beautiful blue eyes which she had missed so much. Her mouth dried. Should she tell him to come round some time? Would that send out the wrong message—or maybe the real message—that it wasn’t just his eyes she had missed?

‘Ariston,’ she began, but he had closed the car door and given an almost imperceptible nod to his driver as the powerful machine pulled away.

And Keeley turned round, slightly ungainly with her baby bump, wanting to catch a glimpse of his face as the car pulled away. Was she hoping for one of those movie endings, where she would surprise a look of longing on his face and she could yell at the driver to stop the car, and…

But he was walking away, striding purposefully towards a black cab which had just switched off its yellow light, and Keeley turned away, biting her lip as the limousine took her southwest, towards Wimbledon.

She was doing the right thing. She was. She kept telling herself that over and over. Why sit through a torturous lunch or even a cup of coffee when Ariston had a face like dark granite? He didn’t love her and he never could. He was an unreasonably jealous and controlling man. He might have the power to turn her to jelly whenever he so much as looked at her but he was all the things she despised.

So how come she still wanted him with a longing which sometimes left her breathless with regret for what could never be?

And she was doing this for their baby, she reminded herself. Building respect between them and forging a relationship which would demonstrate what two adults could achieve if they only put their minds to it.

The journey to her cottage took for ever and in truth it would have been quicker getting the train, but the moment she walked up the path to her little house she could feel a slight lifting of her mood. Wimbledon Common had been one of those places she’d always drooled about when she’d lived in New Malden. She used to take the bus there on her day off. It had a villagey feel and a pond, plus lots of lovely little shops and restaurants. She’d seen other pregnant mothers giving her cautious smiles when she was out and about and she wanted to reach out and make friends, but something was holding her back. She shut the front door with a bang. She didn’t want to let anyone close because then she would have to explain her circumstances and tell them that her brief marriage was over. Because if she admitted it to someone else, then she would have to accept it was true.

And she didn’t want it to be true, she realised. She wanted…

She bit her lip as she batted the dark thoughts away. She didn’t dare express what she wanted, not even to herself. All she knew was that she couldn’t go back to that old way of living. Of feeling like a pampered doll in someone else’s life. A decorative asset to be brought out whenever the situation merited it. She wanted to connect with the real world—not sit in her gilded penthouse and look down on it. And most of all she wanted a man who wouldn’t make out that feelings were like poison—and you should avoid them whenever possible.

She lit a fire in the grate and had just made a pot of tea when there was a ring on the bell. She peered through the peephole, shocked to see Ariston standing on her doorstep, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his trousers, his face a dark glower. She pulled open the door and there he was, his black hair ruffled by the October wind and his jaw all shadowed.

Her heart missed a beat. ‘Ariston,’ she said, wondering if he could hear the slight quaver in her voice. ‘What…what are you doing here?’

His shuttered features looked forbidding. ‘Can I come in?’

She hesitated for only a moment before stepping aside to let him pass. ‘Of course.’

She wasn’t going to do that thing of offering him tea—of pretending this was some kind of social call. There wasn’t going to be any of that fake stuff which just wasted time and meant nothing. She would hear him out and then he would go. But a shiver of apprehension whispered over her because an impromptu visit like this didn’t bode well—not when his expression was so serious and so brooding. Had he decided he was being too soft with her and now that she was showing no signs of moving back, he was going to retaliate? Maybe instruct his lawyers to reduce the generous amount of income she was receiving—to shock her into seeing sense. Was he going to starve her out to make her come back to him? It was an unpalatable thought until she thought of one which was even worse.

That he didn’t want her back.

Pain and panic rushed through her like a hot, fierce tide. What if he’d decided that life was easier without a wife who was constantly nagging him because he stayed late at the office? If he’d decided he’d had enough of domesticity and wanted to get back on the party scene. That she had been right all along and the marriage simply wasn’t working.

‘What do you want, Ariston?’ she said, in a low voice. ‘Why are you here?’

Ariston stared at her and the trilingual fluency of a lifetime suddenly deserted him. On the way here he’d worked out exactly what he was going to say to her but all the words seemed to have flown straight out of his head. But he knew what he wanted, didn’t he? He was a man who was skilled in the art of negotiation. So wasn’t it time to go all out and get it?

‘I’m going to reduce my hours,’ he said.

She looked taken aback, but she nodded. ‘Okay.’

‘Because I realise that you’re right.’ He rubbed his fingers over the faint stubble of his chin as if only just realising he’d forgotten to shave that morning. ‘I’ve been working too hard.’

He looked at her expectantly, waiting for the praise which such a magnanimous gesture surely merited and for her to fling herself into his arms to thank him. But she didn’t. She didn’t move. She just stood there with her green eyes wary and her pale hair glowing in the thin autumn light which was streaming through the window.

‘And your point is, what?’ she questioned.

‘That we’ll spend more time together. Obviously.’

She gave an odd smile. ‘So what has brought about this sudden revelation?’

He frowned, because her reaction was not what he had imagined it would be. ‘I allowed myself to accept that the Kavakos company is in the black and is likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future,’ he said slowly.

She screwed up her nose. ‘And hasn’t it always been?’

Raking his fingers back through his hair, he shook his head. ‘No. I think I told you that when my father died, I discovered he’d blown most of the family fortune. For a while it was touch and go whether or not we’d make it. Suddenly I was looking into a big black hole where the future used to be and I had so many people relying on me. Not just Pavlos but all the staff we employed. People on Lasia whose livelihood depended on our success. People in cities all over the world.’ He sucked in a deep breath. ‘That’s why I put the time in—long hours, every day, way past midnight. It took everything I possessed to turn things around and get the company back on an even keel.’

‘But that was then, and this is now—and Kavakos is arguably the biggest shipping company in the world.’

He nodded. ‘I know that. But hard work got to be such a habit that I let it take me over. And I’m not going to do that any more. I’m going to spend less time at the office and more time at home. With you.’ He looked at her. ‘That’s all.’

The silence which followed seemed to go on and on and when she spoke her voice was trembling.

‘But that’s not all, Ariston,’ she said. ‘The reason you work so hard isn’t because you’ve developed some kind of habit you can’t break or because secretly you live in fear that all your profits are going to disappear overnight. It’s because at work you’re the one in charge and what you say goes. And you like to be in control, don’t you? Work has always provided you with an escape route. It’s there for the taking when your wife wants to get too close or tries to talk about stuff you don’t want to talk about.’

‘Are you listening to a word I’ve just said?’ he demanded. ‘I’ve told you I’ll reduce my hours, if that’s what it takes to get you back.’

‘But don’t you realise?’ she whispered. ‘That’s not enough.’

‘Not enough?’ he echoed, his blue eyes laced with confusion. ‘What else do you want from me, Keeley?’

And here it was, the question she’d wanted him to ask ever since he had carried her to their bedroom on their wedding night. A no-holds-barred question which would make her vulnerable to so much potential pain if she answered it honestly.

Did she dare?

Could she dare not to?

She’d once vowed never to put herself in a position where she could be rejected again, but that was a vow she’d made when she’d been hurt and humbled. All these years later she was a grown woman who would soon have a baby of her own. And it all boiled down to whether she had the courage to put her pride and her fears aside and to reach out for the one thing she wanted.

‘I want your trust,’ she said simply. ‘I want you to believe me when I tell you things and to stop imagining the worst. I want you to stop trying to control me and let me have the freedom to be myself. I want to stop feeling as if I’m swimming against the tide whenever I try to get close to you. I want ours to be a marriage which works—but only if we’re both prepared to work at it. I want us to be equals, Ariston. True equals.’

His eyes narrowed as he nodded his head. ‘You sound like you’ve given this some thought.’

‘Oh, I’ve given it plenty,’ she said truthfully. ‘Only I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get the chance to say it.’

There was another silence and the haunted expression on his face tore at Keeley’s heartstrings for she saw her own fears and insecurities reflected there. It made her want to go to him and hug him tightly—to offer him her strength and to feel his. But she said nothing. Nothing which would break the spell or the hope that he might just reveal what was hidden in his heart, instead of trying to blot it out and hide it away, the way he normally did. Because that was the only way they could go forward, she realised. If they both were honest enough to let the truth shine through.

‘I didn’t want to let you close because I sensed danger—the kind of danger I didn’t know how to handle,’ he said at last. ‘I’d spent years perfecting an emotional control which enabled me to pick up the pieces and care for Pavlos when our mother left. A control which kept the world at a safe distance. A control which enabled me to keep all the balls spinning in the air. I was so busy protecting my brother and safeguarding his future, that I didn’t have time for anything else. I didn’t want anything else. And then I met you and suddenly everything changed. You started to get close. You drew me in, no matter how hard I tried to fight against it, and I recognised that you had the power to hurt me, Keeley.’

‘But I don’t want to hurt you, Ariston,’ she said. ‘I am not your mother and you can’t judge all women by her standards. I want to be there for you—in every way. Won’t you let me do that?’

‘I don’t think I have a choice,’ he admitted huskily. ‘Because my life has been hell without you. My apartment and my life are empty when you aren’t in them, Keeley. Because you speak the truth to me in a way which is sometimes painful to hear—but out of that pain has grown the certainty that I love you. That perhaps I’ve always loved you—and I want to go on loving you for the rest of my life.’

And suddenly she could hold out no longer and crossed the room as quickly as her pregnant shape would allow. She went straight into his arms and at last he was holding her tightly and she closed her eyes against the sudden prick of tears.

‘Keeley,’ he whispered, his mouth pressed hard against her cheek. ‘Oh, Keeley. I’ve been dishonest with myself—right from the start. I felt the thunderbolt the first time I set eyes on you and I’d never felt that way about a woman before. I told myself you were too young—way too young—but then I kissed you and you blew my world apart.’ He pulled away and stroked an unsteady finger over her trembling lips. ‘It was easier to convince myself that I despised you. To tell myself you were cut from the same cloth as your mother, and that I only wanted sex with you to extinguish the burning hunger inside of me. But you just kept igniting the flames. When you became pregnant—a part of me was exultant. I couldn’t decide if it was destiny or fate I needed to thank for a reason to stay close to you. But then came the reality. And the way you made me feel was bigger than anything I’ve ever felt before. It felt…’

‘Scary,’ she finished, pulling back a little so that she could gaze deep into his eyes. ‘I know. Scary for me, too. Because love is precious and rare and most of us don’t know how to handle it, especially when we’ve grown up without it. But we’re bright people, Ariston. We both know what we don’t want—broken homes and lost children and bitter wounds which can never be completely healed. I just want to love you and our baby and to create a happy family life. Don’t you want that too?’

Briefly, Ariston closed his eyes and when he opened them she was still there, just as she always would be. Because some things you just knew, if only you would let your defences down long enough for instinct to take over. And instinct told him that Keeley Kavakos would always love him, though maybe not quite as much as he loved her.

He pulled her closer, his breath warm against her skin. ‘Can we please go to bed so we can plan our future?’ he questioned urgently.

‘Oh, Ariston.’ She rose on tiptoe to wind her arms around his neck, and he could hear the relief which tinged her breathless sigh. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

EPILOGUE

‘SO, HOW ARE you feeling, my clever and very beautiful wife?’

Keeley lifted her gaze from the tiny black head which was cradled against her breast, to find the bright blue eyes of her husband trained on her.

How was she feeling? Tough question. How could words possibly convey the million sentiments which had rushed through her during a long labour, and which had ended just an hour ago with the birth of their son? Joy, contentment and disbelief were all there, that was for sure—along with a savage determination that she would love and protect their new baby with every fibre of her being. Baby Timon. Timon Pavlos Kavakos. She smiled as she traced a feather-light fingertip over his perfect, olive-skinned cheek.

‘I feel like the luckiest woman in the world,’ she said simply.

Ariston nodded. He didn’t want to contradict her at such a time, but if luck was being handed out—then surely he was its biggest recipient? Watching Keeley go through labour had been something which had taught him the true meaning of powerlessness and silently he had cursed that he was unable to bear or share her pain with her. Yet hadn’t it been yet another demonstration of his wife’s formidable strength—to watch her cope so beautifully with each increasing contraction? A wife who was planning to join him in the family business, just as soon as the time was right. He remembered her reaction when he’d first put the idea to her and his tender smile in response to her disbelieving joy. But why wouldn’t he want his capable and very able wife working beside him, with hours which would suit her and their son? Why wouldn’t he want to enjoy her company as much as possible, especially since her command of Greek was getting better by the day?

But she’d told him that these days she studied his language with a passion born from wanting to fit in and not because she was terrified of being left out. Because she was determined to speak the same language as their child. And because family was more important than anything else. A fact which had been drummed home by the sudden death of her mother, a death which in truth had filled Keeley with a sad kind of gratitude, because Vivienne Turner was at peace at last. And it had focussed their minds on the things which mattered. They had decided to make their home on Lasia—on that exquisite paradise of a place, with its green mountains and sapphire sea and skies which were endlessly blue.

Ariston thought how beautiful she looked lying there, still a little pale and exhausted after her long labour, her blonde hair lying damply against her cheeks as she smiled up at him trustingly. ‘Would you like to hold your son now?’ she whispered.

A lump instantly constricted his throat. It was what he’d been waiting for. In fact, it felt as if he’d been waiting for this moment all his life. A little gingerly at first, Ariston took the sleeping bundle from her, and as he bent to kiss the baby’s jet-black hair a fierce wave of love rushed over him. He was used to holding babies because he used to hold Pavlos most of the time—but this felt different. Very different. This child was his flesh. And Keeley’s. Timon. The pounding of his heart was almost deafening and the lump in his throat was making speech difficult, but somehow he got the words out as he looked into the tear-filled eyes of his wife.

‘Efkaristo,’ he said softly.

‘Thanks for what?’ she questioned shakily as he put his free arm tightly around her shoulders and drew her close.

‘For my son, for your love—and for giving me a life beyond my wildest dreams. How about that for starters, koukla mou?’

She was trying to blink them away but the tears of joy just kept rolling down her cheeks and Ariston smiled as he kissed each one away, while their son slept contentedly in his arms.

The Greek’s Pregnant Bride

Michelle Smart

The Gorgeous Greek: Married for His Heir

Christian Markos swapped the streets of Athens for the world’s top boardrooms. Now, with enough riches to indulge his every whim, there’s only one luxury he can’t buy: stunning, sensual Alessandra Mondelli.

His best friend’s sister is strictly off-limits…until their forbidden attraction consumes them both, leaving Alessandra pregnant!

After a youthful mistake, Alessandra is no stranger to public scrutiny. Christian’s honorable proposal offers her and their baby protection, but she must push all thoughts of love aside. Except their dishonorable hunger for one another is threatening their convenient arrangement!

The world’s sexiest billionaires finally say “I do!”

To the wonderful sisters in my life:

Jennie, Lulu & Joanne xxx

CHAPTER ONE

CHRISTIAN MARKOS TIPPED the last of his champagne down his throat and immediately refilled his glass.

He’d known today was going to be hard, but hadn’t imagined quite how torturous it would be. Not even all the running around he’d done with Rocco that morning, in their seemingly desperate attempt to find the bride, had mitigated it.

Afterwards, he’d stood by the side of his closest friend on the happiest day of his life and all he’d been able to think was how deeply he’d betrayed him.

While Rocco had been exchanging his vows, Christian had been using all his willpower to stop his gaze flitting to Alessandra.

He was still fighting it.

Alessandra Mondelli: Rocco’s baby sister. A pretty child who’d grown into a ravishingly beautiful woman. The one woman in the world who was totally off-limits.

Or should have been.

Attired in a long, sleeveless, silk mauve dress, with her glossy, dark-chestnut hair pulled back in a tight chignon, she’d arrived by boat with the radiant bride, the spring sun beaming down on her golden skin.

In his eyes the chief bridesmaid outshone everyone, including the famous supermodel bride.

The last time he’d seen Alessandra she’d been wearing a short, cream lace dress with black beading and a pair of black shoes so high he’d been amazed she could walk in them. But walk in them she had, beautifully, her delectable bottom swaying with every step. That was the last time he’d seen her clothed. The last time he’d seen her properly she’d been burrowed naked under the bed covers in her apartment.

The wedding party had moved from the beautiful gardens by Lake Como and into the Villa Mondelli ballroom. The wedding dinner was over, the evening celebration about to start. He’d made his best man’s speech and managed to raise some laughs from the other guests, especially Stefan and Zayed, who’d substituted the speech he’d written with a bluer version. Instead of relaxing, knowing his job was done, Christian was on tenterhooks waiting for the music to strike up.

An American A-list starlet kept making eyes at him, a stunning woman with a body to die for. Just six weeks ago he would have been at her side like a shot. If not her, then one of the other gorgeous women littering this star-studded event already being labelled ‘wedding of the century.’ Supermodels, lingerie models, singers… It was like being a child in a sweetshop.

If that were the case, then he must have diabetes, because none of the sweets looked remotely tempting.

Except one. The forbidden one.

How could he have allowed things to get so out of hand? He might flit from bed to bed but he never lost control of himself.

To have lost his control with Alessandra…

He could blame it on all the champagne they’d drunk. He could blame it on a lot of things, but all the blame was on himself.

Alessandra had been vulnerable. Try as she’d done to hide it, she’d been a mess, grieving the loss of her grandfather, the man who’d raised her since she’d been a baby and who’d been buried barely two weeks before.

Christian had dropped in at the House of Mondelli, the world-famous fashion house, on his way back from Hong Kong, expecting to take Rocco out for a night on the tiles, maybe spend the weekend together on his Italian friend’s yacht. But Rocco had been in New York and he’d bumped into Alessandra, who’d insisted he take her out instead. Under normal circumstances he would have made his excuses and got back in his jet to fly on to Athens. If he hadn’t caught the desperation in her beautiful honey-brown eyes, he would have done just that, not found himself recalling how she’d barely been able to stand during the funeral service.

When they’d set out for the evening, the last thing he’d expected was that they would end up in bed together.

Women came and went in his life on a regular basis. He could only assume that it was the fact Alessandra was someone who was in his life, so to speak, that meant he was having a hard job forgetting and moving on. That and the guilt of it all. She might have been the one to instigate the kiss that had led to them making love, but the blame for what followed lay firmly on his shoulders.

He should have been stronger.

In the six weeks since he’d seen her, he’d worked hard to push her from the forefront to the back of his mind, enough so that he’d arrived at Lake Como confident he could handle being in her presence without any problems.

He’d taken one look at her and all the guilt had churned itself back up. They’d exchanged a few brief words over the course of the day, the same basic pleasantries they’d exchanged with everyone else, but that was the extent of their interaction. So far, at least. There was still the dance to get through.

Whether he liked it or not, he would have to hold her in his arms one more time.

Stefan said something to him at the exact moment the band started their warm-up. As he spoke, Christian saw Olivia lean in close to press her ear to Rocco’s mouth. It was a gesture that reminded him of his dinner with Alessandra, the way she’d leaned into him to hear him speak over the noise of the restaurant; the way her sultry scent had played under his nose…

From the corner of his eye he could see her chatting to the official photographer, the photographer probably getting tips from her. Alessandra Mondelli was one of the most famous fashion photographers in the world, a remarkable achievement, considering she was still only twenty-five. She’d made it all on her own. Just as he’d made his name on his own.

Stefan repeated himself; he’d been talking about the charitable foundation they and their friends had formed some years back.

Italian Rocco Mondelli, Sicilian Stefan Bianco, desert Prince Zayed Al Afzal and he had all taken a keen interest in running and raising money for their charity. They were the so-called Columbia Four, although he couldn’t recall which of them had dubbed them so. Whoever had come up with it, it had stuck. They’d met during their first week at Columbia University and, as incredible as it was to look back on, the bond they’d formed had been instant. That bond had grown and a good few years later, when it had become obvious all four were heading towards the Forbes World’s Billionaires List, they’d formed the charity. Christian was extremely proud of their charity, founded to ensure disadvantaged kids could get the education they deserved but were unable to afford. It felt good for them to be doing something together that didn’t involve drinking and bedding as many beautiful women as they could.

They all believed the bond between them to be unbreakable.

But even the strongest steel could be destroyed.

He answered with what he hoped sounded like intelligence but, in truth, what came out of his mouth sounded so unintelligible he could be speaking Martian.

Luckily Stefan’s attention was diverted by the band striking up their first song.

The bride and groom glided onto the dance floor to loud applause.

Christian’s eyes drifted to his right, back to Alessandra. She was looking straight at him, a trapped expression in her eyes.

His chest tightened.

A powerful slap to his shoulder broke the spell.

‘Time to get yourself on the dance floor,’ Zayed said, sitting on the empty seat to Christian’s left.

Theos. He had to dance with her. Olivia, the bride, had ordered it. The best man and chief bridesmaid…

Alessandra met him halfway, her obvious apprehension mirroring what raced inside him.

It would help if the band were playing one of the usual upbeat tunes that had made them one of the most famous groups in the world rather than the cover of a romantic ballad they were currently warbling.

Gritting his teeth, he walked by her side to the dance floor and took her into his arms.

His heart jolted at the first touch, a dozen memories playing in his mind. Her scent. Her taste…

The back of her dress was low, leaving him no option but to touch her silky skin. It was either that or hold on to her bottom. His hand lay rigid against her bare back, hardly touching her.

Yet, no matter the physical distance he tried to impose between himself and her slender form, his senses filled with Alessandra, her sultry scent playing tricks on him as they moved over the dance floor in a manner more akin to a pair of robots than a couple who’d had a wild night of sex just six weeks before. The stirring that had begun when he’d watched her walk up the aisle and had simmered since took on new life, an ache forming in his groin that he willed away with increasing frustration.

Think of Rocco, he ordered himself, staring at his loved-up friend who was locked in the arms of his equally loved-up wife. Rocco caught his eye and nodded briefly before leaning down to kiss his bride.

That one action felt like a knife in Christian’s guts.

What would his friend say if he knew his best man had taken his sister’s virginity?

The all-consuming desire he’d felt that night still dwelled in his blood. One night was all he usually needed, all he wanted. Once a woman had been enjoyed, there were no more mysteries to discover, no need for a repeat.

His skin felt as if it were dancing its own tune, his body out of kilter with what his head demanded.

He followed the words of the song they were dancing to, counting down the time to when the obligatory dance would be over. From the stiffness in Alessandra’s stance, she was counting down the time too.

When the song finally came to an end and he made to pull away, she tilted her head to look at him, her doe-like eyes staring at him. Theos, she was so beautiful, those striking eyes set above a snub nose framed by slanting cheekbones. Her delicious plump lips parted. ‘Christian, I…’

Whatever she was going to say was cut short when Zayed tapped her on the shoulder and threw Christian a conspiratorial wink. ‘I do believe it’s my turn to dance with the beautiful lady,’ he said in a voice loud enough for Rocco to hear.

The groom turned his head towards the raised voice, his eyes narrowing before he broke into a wide grin.

It clearly didn’t cross his mind that any of his friends would dream of doing anything with the sister he was so protective of.

Sickened with himself, Christian stepped back and forced a smile, mock-bowing. ‘She’s all yours.’

He waited for Alessandra to make a good-natured but cutting retort about not being anyone’s property, but her eyes were stark on his face, a fleeting look of panic flashing over her which she quickly covered. But not quickly enough.

The ballroom of Villa Mondelli had enough waiting staff not to let any guest go thirsty for longer than thirty seconds but Christian wanted to get away from the hubbub of the mingling guests and headed to the bar.

After a shot of bourbon, he turned his head to see her now dancing with Stefan. She looked happy to be dancing with him, he thought, taken aback at the strength of his bitterness.

It was only natural she’d been stiff and awkward in Christian’s arms. A one-night stand hadn’t been on either of their minds when they’d set out that evening.

He’d been her first lover.

That, more than anything, was the thing that refused to dislodge from his mind.

The woman who’d been vilified by the press for an affair with a married man when she’d been a teenager had been a virgin. He’d always suspected there had been more to the story than had been written but the truth had come as a cataclysmic shock.

Whatever the truth, it was none of his business. Alessandra was none of his business. She couldn’t be.

He took another shot to clear the bile crawling up his throat and watched Stefan place a hand to her waist. The bile almost choked him to see her laugh at something his friend said in her ear.

Zayed appeared at his side. ‘Hiding yourself away, buddy?’

‘Just taking a few moments.’

Stefan finished his dance and came over to join them. ‘What are we all drinking?’

‘Christian’s already on the hard stuff,’ Zayed said, indicating the empty shot glasses before them on the bar.

Christian hardly listened. Alessandra had left the dance floor. A quick scan of the ballroom found her sitting at a table with a group of people he didn’t recognise. She was staring at him.

Their gazes held before he pulled away and fixed a smile on his face for his friends’ benefit.

‘Who’s ready for a shot?’ Before either could answer, he waved at the barman to pour them a bourbon each.

The three friends, sitting in a row at the bar, raised their glasses and chanted, ‘Memento vivere!’ ‘Remember to live,’ the motto the four friends did live by, and downed their shots.

‘I never thought I’d see us at a wedding for one of our own,’ Zayed mused, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I still can’t believe Rocco’s got married. I mean…married?’

‘Who would have thought he’d fall in love?’ Stefan said with the same incredulous tone.

Christian grunted and caught the barman’s attention for another round.

Call him cynical, but he couldn’t help wonder how long it would be before the love they felt for each other turned into something ugly. Because that was what marriage did—turned two people full of hope and love into bitter caricatures of themselves.

Much safer for everyone’s sake to avoid emotional entanglement. Christian conducted his own affairs by enjoying the moment and then moving on with the minimum of fuss. He had known before he was in double figures that marriage was not for him.

Zayed swivelled on his stool to cast his eyes over the ballroom. ‘There are some hot women here.’

Stefan grinned. ‘I noticed that lingerie model giving you the eye.’

‘I thought she was an actress?’

‘No, that was the other one.’

‘I tell you who knocks spots off all these women,’ Zayed said. ‘Alessandra.’

Christian snapped his head round to stare at him. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

Zayed raised his hands. ‘I’m just making an observation.’

‘Well, don’t.’

‘Man, you know I wouldn’t go there. I’d never do that to Rocco— Where are you going?’ he added when Christian got up from his stool and made to leave.

‘To get some air.’

‘You not feeling well?’ Stefan was looking at him closely.

‘It’s been a busy time. I’m probably jet-lagged. Get another round in—I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

Instead of going outside, Christian went to the restroom and splashed cold water on his face.

He’d been a paper thickness away from punching Zayed.

Theos, he needed to get a grip on himself.

This was his guilt and his problem. No one else’s.

Back in the ballroom his eyes automatically sought Alessandra out. As he found her, she turned her head in his direction, as if some sixth sense told her he was there. Quickly she turned away.

He thought he was doing a good job of hiding his guilt-ridden inner turmoil. After that one close call of almost punching one of his oldest and closest friends for an innocuous remark, he joined in with the celebration they were there for, drinking, laughing and horsing about, being the same old Christian he always was when with them.

Except, every time he looked, he found Alessandra’s gaze upon him. Their eyes would meet for a fraction of a second before jerking away. She certainly seemed to be enjoying herself, though, dancing with anyone who cared to ask, at one point stealing Olivia from Rocco and waltzing her around the floor to screams of delight.

Only when the bride and groom, their hands clenched tightly together, left to head off to their secret honeymoon destination did Christian determine his duty to have been done.

Exchanging bear hugs with Zayed and Stefan, who called him every laughably demeaning name under the sun for retiring to bed so early, he strode out of the ballroom, unable to resist one last glance at Alessandra. For once, she wasn’t looking at him.

He was about to climb the stairs to the sleeping quarters when he heard his name called.

Stefan approached him and pulled him into another embrace. ‘You are playing with fire, my friend,’ he said into his ear.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Sure you do.’ He pulled back a little and brought his hands up to Christian’s face, slapping both his cheeks lightly. ‘You have to end it. Now.’

Christian’s chest compressed. He couldn’t lie to his friend. ‘It was over before it started.’

‘Good. Keep it that way. For all our sakes.’

Alessandra took a deep breath and knocked on the door. The party was still going strong, a DJ having replaced the band, music pounding through the walls. There were revellers all over the villa but thankfully this wing was quiet and devoid of people.

She waited a few moments before knocking again, louder.

Unless Christian had left without telling anyone, he was in there. The dim light seeping under the door testified to this. She’d casually asked Stefan and Zayed where their fellow musketeer had escaped to. She could only hope she’d imagined the suspicious but pitying look in Stefan’s eyes when he’d told her Christian had gone to bed.

Please, God, let him be alone in there.

What were the chances?

She’d been nothing special, just another notch on a bedpost crammed with notches.

Christian Markos travelled with a trail of broken hearts attached to him ranging from Hong Kong to London. Some sold their stories to the tabloids, tales of short-lived lust before being discarded. Some spoke with bitterness. Most spoke with longing. Most wanted him to break their hearts all over again.

It took an age before the handle turned and the door opened.

Christian stood clad in a pair of jeans. And nothing else.

He blinked narrowing eyes. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I need to talk to you. Can I come in?’

His bronzed throat rose. ‘That’s not a good idea.’

‘It’s important.’

His firm lips, usually quirked in an easy smile, clamped together. He shifted past her, looking both directions down the wide corridor before ushering her in and swiftly closing the door.

His room was tidy, his tuxedo hanging neatly on the door of the wardrobe. The bed was rumpled; a tablet was on the bedside table next to a half-full bottle of bourbon and an empty glass.

‘Are you drunk?’ she challenged. This was a conversation she needed to have when he was sober.

‘No.’ He strode to the window and closed the heavy curtains. ‘Believe me, I’ve been trying to reach that state.’

If only she were in a position to reach that state herself.

‘Today went well,’ she said, sitting gingerly on the corner chair. She could really do with a shot of that bourbon. It would make what was coming next easier to cope with, of that she was certain. ‘Rocco and Liv looked really happy.’

Their obvious happiness had had the dual effect of making her heart lighten for her brother’s sake and sink at the knowledge it was something she could never have for herself.

Christian propped himself against the wall by the window and crossed his arms over his broad chest. She hadn’t really had the opportunity to study his torso in her apartment, and now she could look at it properly she felt the heat she’d experienced that night bloom anew.

Years of rowing and track had honed his physique, his form strong and athletic, his shoulders broad. Fine hair dusted across his bronzed chest and she felt an almost unbearable compulsion to hurtle herself into his arms and take solace in his strength.

Making love to him had been an experience she would never forget. The single best experience of her life.

Try as she had to expel the memories from her head, they’d stayed with her, tantalising her, taunting her with the knowledge it was an experience that could never be repeated.

The simple remembrance of his smooth skin flush against her nakedness made her feel as if her insides were being liquidised.

‘What did you want to talk to me about?’ he asked, cutting the preamble and pulling her back to the present. While he wasn’t being unfriendly, there was none of the easy-going Christian she knew. She didn’t have to be psychic to know he wanted her gone from his room.

His regret and self-loathing were obvious.

Her heart hammered beneath her ribs, her stomach roiling with nerves that threatened to overwhelm her.

This was all her fault…

‘I’m pregnant.’

CHAPTER TWO

THE SILENCE THAT FOLLOWED Alessandra’s stark statement was total.

Christian seemed to deflate before her eyes, as if he’d suffered a body blow.

Which no doubt her news was, she thought miserably.

How she’d kept herself together throughout the day she would never know, her only thought having been that she mustn’t ruin Rocco and Olivia’s special day. She mustn’t.

She’d spent pretty much her entire life trying to keep herself together in public, the hardest before tonight being two months ago when they’d buried her grandfather. The paparazzi had been out in force. She’d worn dark glasses until they’d entered the church, refusing to give them the money shot they so desired. Even when Sandro, her alcoholic father, had turned up drunk and made that dreadful scene, she’d kept her composure. Christian and Zayed had been the ones who’d calmly approached him and dragged him away.

Christian staggered over to the bed and sat heavily on it, clutching his head.

‘Please. Say something,’ she beseeched. The back of her retinas burned and she blinked furiously. No matter what happened in the next few minutes, she would not cry. She’d done enough of that.

He fixed his blue eyes on her. ‘How long have you known?’

‘A while, I guess, but I only took the test a couple of days ago.’ She laughed, a hollow sound even to her own ears. ‘I took three of them, hoping they were wrong.’ At the third positive reading, she’d climbed onto her bed and sobbed.

‘Have you seen a doctor?’

‘Not yet.’ She bit into her lip. It had taken her almost a fortnight to entertain the possibility that her late period might actually mean something, another fortnight before she’d unburied her head from the sand and crossed the threshold into the pharmacy.

She’d never believed she would be a mother. Motherhood went hand in hand with relationships and she certainly didn’t believe in them.

‘But you’re certain?’

‘Yes.’ Once the reality of her condition had sunk into her shell-shocked brain, the tears had stopped.

Inside her, right in the heart of her womanhood, a tiny life grew.

Whatever the outcome of this conversation with Christian, nothing could change the fact that this life—her baby—was a part of her. Nothing could have prepared her for the host of emotions pregnancy would bring. It might be early days in pregnancy terms but already she loved it, this little alien developing within her; knew she would do anything to nurture and protect it. Anything.

Silence rang out, the only sound Christian’s heavy breathing. She’d never seen his features—all angles and straight lines forming what had been dubbed one of the most handsome faces in Europe—look so empty.

‘I’m so sorry.’

His brows drew together. ‘Sorry for what?’

‘I screwed up.’ She forced herself to look him straight in the eye. ‘I didn’t take my pill properly.’

He shook his head and expelled a breath through his mouth, running a hand through his cropped dirty-blond hair. ‘And you didn’t think to tell me that?’

‘I didn’t know the dangers, not properly.’

‘How could you not know? It’s basic biology.’ He swore under his breath.

‘I was put on the pill because my periods were painful, not for the purpose of contraception.’

‘You should have told me. Theos, if I’d known you didn’t take it at regular intervals I would have made certain to use a condom.’

‘I am sorry, truly sorry.’

The knuckles of his hands were white. She could see his temper hanging by a thread.

‘You can’t put this on yourself—I can’t put it on you,’ he eventually said. ‘We were both there. I should have had the sense to use a condom like I normally do.’

She closed her eyes, pushing away thoughts of him with other women. ‘Christian…I can’t do this on my own. I need your support—not financially but in other ways.’ Financially she could do it alone. She had her apartment, her career was thriving…

She opened her eyes and looked at his still-dazed face. ‘I know I’ve had a head start getting my head around all this, and that’s unfair on you, but I need your word—on your honour—that you’ll be there for me and our baby.’ Not that she could trust it. He was a man. Men always broke their promises.

All the same, she had to try and put a little faith in him. He was the father of her child. But then, her own father was the worst liar of all. He’d lied to her mother on her deathbed, promising to care for their children, never to leave them. That had been the biggest lie of all.

The only men she trusted were her brother and her grandfather. It had broken her grieving heart to learn recently that her grandfather had had his own dark secrets.

If it hadn’t been for his death, she would never have slept with Christian. She’d bumped into him in the House of Mondelli headquarters after she’d had a meeting with the fashion director about a campaign she’d been hired to shoot. Christian had turned up to take her brother out but Rocco had been in New York.

She’d been in a bad place, she could see that now, trying to cope with her grief but not having a clue how to manage it. She’d never known pain like it. It still had the power to lance her.

Christian had presented the perfect opportunity for a night out where she could forget her pain for one evening, so she’d talked him into going out with her instead. Not for a minute had she imagined she would fall into bed with him.

But she had done just that and now she had to pay the consequences.

And so did Christian.

She might never be able to trust him but she’d had enough faith, whatever her state of mind, to lose her virginity to him. That had to account for something.

She wished he would say something. His frame was still but his eyes were alert. She couldn’t read them. Couldn’t read him.

‘When news of the pregnancy comes out the press are going to swarm all over it. I’ve lived through one scandal and I can’t go through that again on my own. I just can’t.’ Simply imagining going through it all again made her hands go clammy and her stomach churn. How clearly she remembered those awful days when the paparazzi had laid siege to Villa Mondelli, leaving her a prisoner in her own home. She’d never been so scared and alone in all her life. ‘If I know I can rely on you for support when I need it, and later on when our baby needs it, I might be able to sleep again.’

Christian’s throat rose before he twisted onto his side and grabbed his bourbon and glass. He poured a hefty measure and offered it to her.

She shook her head.

‘Of course not,’ he muttered, taking a large swallow of it. ‘You’re pregnant. Did you not drink today?’

‘I had a small champagne during the toasts but that’s all.’

He got to his feet and headed back to the window, peeking through the curtain.

‘Will you support me?’ she pressed. For her own peace of mind she needed to know. If he refused she didn’t know what she would do other than fall into a crumpled ball. Or maybe join a convent.

No. She wouldn’t do either. For the sake of the life inside her, she would endure.

‘Will you support our baby and be its father?’

The ringing that had echoed in Christian’s ears since Alessandra’s pronouncement that she was pregnant subsided.

He gazed at her belly, still flat under the lilac of her dress, not a hint that within it lay the tiny seed of life.

The life they had created together.

His baby.

He was going to be a father.

As this knowledge seeped through him, he thought of his own father, a man who’d left before Christian had been old enough to memorise his features. He had no memories of him, no possessions to place a tangible hold on him. Nothing. Not even a photograph. His mother had burned them all.

If there was one thing he knew with bone-deep certainty, it was that he didn’t want a child of his being raised without a father to look out for him or her.

From infancy it had been just him and his mother, a woman whose bitterness ran so deep it seemed to seep from her pores. His father had turned his back on them both and in turn had created the woman she’d become.

Christian would not be that man.

He raised his gaze from Alessandra’s belly to meet her eyes, a sharpness driving in his chest to see all the fear and uncertainty contained in them. Despite the braveness she strove to convey, her hands trembled, her teeth driving in and out of her plump lips as she awaited his response.

He knew what his response must be.

‘Yes,’ he said, nodding slowly for emphasis. ‘I will support you and our child. But in return I want you to marry me.’

The comb holding Alessandra’s hair in place had been digging into her scalp all day, a minor irritation that suddenly felt magnified enough for her to yank it out. She got to her feet, swiping fallen hair off her face.

For a moment she couldn’t speak, her brain struggling to find the English she’d spoken like a native since early childhood. ‘I know this is a shock for you. I know, okay? But marriage?’

‘Yes, marriage.’

She shook her head, trying her hardest not to let panic set in. ‘Please, don’t say anything you’ll regret in the morning when you look at the situation with fresh eyes.’

‘The morning won’t change the situation. You’ll still be pregnant.’

‘And I still won’t be marrying you.’

‘Alessandra…’ He bit back his rising voice. ‘Alessandra, think about it. This is the obvious solution. Marriage will give legitimacy to our child.’

‘This isn’t the nineteenth century. There’s no stigma to children born outside of wedlock.’

His eyes swirled with an emotion she didn’t understand. ‘Children need and deserve two parents. You know that as well as I do.’

One parent would have been nice in her case, she thought bitterly. Yes, her father was still alive, but he’d never been a real father to her. He’d abandoned her almost from her first breath. By the time of her first birthday, he’d gambled and drunk away their home and had foisted Rocco and her into the care of his elderly father.

She felt as if she’d been blindsided. Marriage was the last thing she’d expected Christian to suggest. The most she’d hoped for was public support for her and their child, and even that had felt like a pipe dream considering she was dealing with the commitment-phobic Christian Markos. He made Casanova look like a monk.

She hadn’t allowed herself to hope for anything more substantial, had envisaged her and the baby’s future with Christian flitting in and out when it suited him. She’d even prepared her ‘please don’t introduce our child to a succession of aunties’ speech. In her head she’d prepared for just about every imaginable scenario. Apart from the scenario where he demanded marriage.

‘Christian, please, be realistic. Marriage is…’

‘Something neither of us wants,’ he finished for her, meeting her gaze with steady eyes.

How clearly she remembered discussing marriage on their night out together, the night their baby had been conceived. Fools had been just one of the many words they’d used to describe people who willingly entered matrimony. They’d even toasted this rare meeting of minds.

‘Exactly. Something neither of us wants.’

He finished his drink with a grimace. ‘Seeing as neither of us has any intention of marrying in the conventional sense, marriage each other for the sake of our child isn’t going to destroy either of our dreams. We won’t be making a lifelong commitment to each other, just to our child.’

‘But marriage…?’

‘Marriage will legitimise the pregnancy and avert any scandal. The press will still swarm over the story, that’s a given, but their angle will be softer towards you.’

‘Accepting paternity will have the same effect. At this moment, that’s all I need. Your acceptance. Everything else can be arranged between us later. There’s plenty of time.’

‘And what about what I need?’ he challenged. ‘You tell me I’m going to be a father and that you want my support but when I offer you the biggest support I can—marriage—you dismiss it out of hand.’

‘What do you need?’ she asked, now thoroughly confused. ‘What will you get out of us marrying?’

‘The chance to be a father,’ he answered with a shrug. ‘I’ve built up a multi-billion-dollar business and have no one to pass it to.’

She didn’t bother to hide her scorn. ‘Money.’ The only thing he enjoyed more than bedding women.

His blue eyes flashed sharply. ‘No. A legacy. But even if I didn’t have the wealth I would still want us to marry. I know what it’s like growing up without a father and I will not have my child go through that. I want my child to have my name and know he—or she—is mine.’

How did he do it? No wonder he was reputed to be one of the greatest financial minds in the world. Money was what Christian dealt with every day, a world-renowned financial genius advising all the major corporations in all the different sectors.

She’d spent days agonising over all the possible details. He’d grasped the situation and dissected all the permutations in an instant. Having only known him as her brother’s friend, she’d never appreciated this side of him before.

She appreciated it even less now.

‘You can still be a father to our child without marriage.’

‘And you can still be a single mother without any support other than financially,’ he said, a warning note coming into his voice.

‘I’ve already told you, I don’t need or want your money.’

He inhaled a long breath. ‘I’m trying to do what’s right here. I don’t want to force your hand but I have to think of our child. He or she deserves stability—marriage gives that. Or is your freedom more important?’

Christian watched Alessandra suck her cheeks in at his remark. He didn’t blame her. Right then he was prepared to say whatever it took to get her to agree.

Theos, an hour ago the thought of marriage would have made him run all the way to Hong Kong but now here he was, virtually coercing her into marrying him.

‘That’s not fair,’ she said hoarsely.

‘Life isn’t fair.’ He knew that all too well; it was the whole reason he was demanding this from her. ‘Marriage needn’t be a prison for either of us. You can carry on with your career.’

‘How generous of you. You’re welcome to carry on with your career too.’

He ignored her sarcasm, understanding the place of fear it came from. If he felt his world had just turned on its axis he could only imagine how it must be for her. She had to carry their baby into the world.

It was their baby he was thinking of. Christian had grown up knowing somewhere out there was the man who had fathered him but who wanted nothing to do with him, his own son. He had never understood why. He still didn’t.

It had taken many years for him to accept his father’s abandonment as a simple fact of life but as a child it had been a painful knowledge. He would never put his own child through that. His child would grow up feeling loved and secure with two parents who both wanted nothing more than to love and protect him or her.

Looking at Alessandra rest a protective hand against her still-flat stomach, he could see how deeply she already felt for their child.

Their child. His responsibility. Their responsibility, to be shouldered together.

‘When we marry the world will see a united couple…’ he started.

‘Don’t talk as if it’s a done deal. Marriage changes everything. It’s not just two people signing a piece of paper and exchanging a bit of jewellery. There are legal implications.’

‘And it’s those legal implications I want. I want our child to know their parents loved them enough to create a stable family for them.’

‘This is too much.’ She got to her feet. He experienced a sharp pang to see her tremble, to witness her keeping it all together, just as she’d done at her grandfather’s funeral.

She carried herself so tall it was easy to overlook that she was a slip of a woman. Her glossy hair was sprawled over her shoulders, her golden skin pale.

The last thing he wanted was to hurt her but within him lay a deep-rooted certainty that this was the right path for them. It was the only path.

‘I need to sleep on this,’ she said, her honey eyes brimming with emotion, her usually accent-less English inflected with her Italian heritage. ‘I can’t agree to marriage just because you’ve clicked your fingers. You might change your mind. I’ve sprung this on you. Everything will look different in the morning.’

There were a dozen threats he could make to ensure her agreement. He bit them all back. He felt bad enough as it was without adding more ill deeds to the slate against him. There was one more thing he could add, though…

‘I won’t change my mind but you can go ahead and sleep on it,’ he said. ‘While you’re lying in your bed thinking, consider the ramifications if you decide not to take me up on my proposal. If you marry me, scandal averted. If you don’t, the press will crucify you and drag your brother and the entire House of Mondelli through the mud with you. Do you really want to go through all that again? Do you want Rocco to go through all that again?’

She stilled, stormy eyes locked on his.

‘Do you want all the speculation over who the father is? The old scandal being raked up as the world wonders if you’ve been playing around with another married man?’

‘But I never…’

He hated to see the hurt and bewilderment that flashed across her features but he had no choice. For their child’s sake he would deploy every weapon in his arsenal to get her agreement. ‘You know that and I know that. The rest of the world will believe what it wants to believe and, as it’s doing so, the world’s eyes will be on you.’

‘You know how to play dirty,’ she said hoarsely, her chest heaving.

‘I could never have left Greece without learning how. If you refuse, you will have to deal with the press and the world’s attention on your own. I will make no acknowledgement until our baby is born.’

Her throat moved as she swallowed, her eyes blazing their loathing at him. ‘Do not think you can blackmail me, Markos.’

‘I don’t want to blackmail you,’ he said, wondering why the sound of his surname being spat from her delicious, plump lips landed like a barb in his chest. ‘But you leave me no choice.’

She backed to the door and gripped the handle. ‘I’m going to my room now. I’ll give you my answer in the morning.’

‘There is only one answer.’

‘You can still wait on it.’

CHAPTER THREE

HIS HEAD THUMPING, Christian entered the magnificent dining room where breakfast was being served. Alessandra was already there. So too were Stefan, Zayed and a handful of other guests who’d stayed the night rather than retire to their yachts or have their helicopters collect them.

It was little comfort that every person in the room looked exactly how he felt. Skata. Like crap.

He might not have been able to get himself as drunk as he’d wanted but his body was punishing him regardless for the quantity of alcohol he’d consumed.

Alessandra’s gaze darted to him. Anyone looking at her could be forgiven for thinking she had a hangover too. Only he knew the dark rings under her bloodshot eyes were caused by a different reason.

He doubted she’d had any more sleep than the snatches he’d managed.

Even so, she still had that certain charisma that she carried like a second skin; her hair, left loose to tumble halfway down her back, as glossy as ever.

He took the seat next to Zayed, who was clutching a black coffee as if his life depended on it, and poured himself a cup of his own. He shook his head as a member of staff asked what he’d like to eat.

All he wanted at that moment was hot, sweet caffeine. And a dozen painkillers.

No sooner had he taken his first sip than Alessandra rose, murmuring something to Stefan, who gave a pained laugh and immediately rubbed at his temples.

He waited long enough not to rouse any suspicion, making innocuous hangover talk with his buddies, before saying he was going for a lie down.

Alessandra’s room was in a different wing from where he and his uni friends always slept when they stayed at the villa. He hadn’t realised he knew exactly which room was hers until he knocked on the door. After a minute of no response, he nudged it open. It was empty.

Moving stealthily so as not to attract attention, he slipped out of the villa and into the gardens.

After much searching, he tracked her down. She was sitting on the stone steps that led into Lake Como. Only one yacht remained from the handful that had been moored overnight.

She didn’t acknowledge his presence.

Today she was dressed in ankle-length tight white jeans and a pale-pink cashmere top, the V plunging down to display a hint of swollen cleavage, the only outward physical sign of the changes taking place within her.

What other changes were taking place within that gorgeous form…?

A stark image came into his mind of the perfection of her breasts, the way they seemed to have been made to fit his hands… If he closed his eyes he could still taste them, taste her…

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked abruptly, forcing thoughts of her naked body from his mind as he sat on the cold stone beside her.

‘About as well as can be expected,’ she replied after a long pause.

‘I never asked last night how you’re coping with the pregnancy—physically, I mean.’

Another pause. ‘So far I’ve been lucky. No morning sickness or anything.’

‘I’ve made a few calls and rearranged my schedule so I can stay in Milan for a few days. First thing tomorrow morning, we’re going to see your doctor.’

‘I’ve got a shoot to do.’ She cast sharp eyes at him. ‘And, before you accuse me of being selfish again, I’d like to point out that for me to cancel the shoot would mean a good dozen people’s schedules being thrown. We can see the doctor in the afternoon.’

At least she was willing to see a doctor with him. That was a start.

‘Does this mean you are in agreement to us marrying?’

She fell silent for a few moments, tucking a strand of hair behind an ear. ‘If we marry, we both automatically become our child’s legal guardian.’

‘I am aware of that.’ It was one of the things he wanted—his paternity to be recognised by law. Marriage might be destructive and capable of ruining people but it was the only way he could ensure his child had his protection. For that reason alone he was prepared to do it. For their child’s sake, it was no sacrifice.

She stared at him. ‘If anything happens to me, you have sole responsibility.’

He felt his blood chill at the sudden solemnity in her tone. ‘Why are you talking like this?’

‘Do you know how my mother died?’ she asked in that same thoughtful tone.

‘Rocco never liked to talk about her other than to say she’d died when he was seven.’ Alessandra would have been a baby, he realised, doing the maths for the first time.

Her gaze didn’t falter. ‘She died having me.’

Theos…

‘Rocco never said.’ He shook his head, trying to digest her words.

‘Rocco suffered the most out of all of us.’ A faraway look formed in her eyes before she blinked it away and cleared her throat.

‘What happened to her?’ he asked, rubbing his chin, trying to imagine the Mondelli siblings as they’d been then: Rocco a child of seven, and Alessandra, so fresh and new-born she’d barely taken her first breath before her mother had been taken away from her forever.

He racked his pounding brain, trying to remember the age Rocco had been when he’d gone to live with Giovanni Mondelli, their grandfather. Eight, if he was recollecting correctly, which meant Alessandra had been a year at the most.

She’d never known the love of either a mother or a father.

At least his own mother had been there. For all her faults, she’d never abandoned him or reneged on her responsibility as a mother.

‘She suffered from severe pre-eclampsia,’ Alessandra said, her husky voice soft.

Red-hot anger flooded through him, pushing away the ache that had formed in his chest at learning of the tragic circumstances of her birth. ‘Why the hell haven’t you seen a doctor yet?’

‘It doesn’t affect women until the later stages of pregnancy. For the time being, I’m fine. My mother didn’t know what she was dealing with—she’d already given birth to a healthy child without any complications. Medicine has advanced a lot since then and we can prepare for it. The odds of anything happening to me are remote. But—and this is why I’m saying this now, before I agree to anything—if the worst happens then I need to know that you will rise to your legal and moral duty and raise our child.’

‘I would never abandon our child,’ he said harshly. ‘I’ve lived without a father; I know what it’s like to wonder where you’re from. I will never let our child wonder who I am.’

‘My father said that to my mother. He promised he would love and care for us but he broke it—he broke the promise he made to a dying woman. He abandoned me. He abandoned Rocco.’

‘I am not your father. What he did was despicable. After the way my own father abandoned me, I would never give up my own flesh and blood.’

‘I have to trust that you won’t be like either of our fathers but I find trusting people, especially men, very hard. If I stay single, then I can nominate the guardian of my choosing.’

If fire could have shot from eyes then what burned from Christian’s would have had her in flames.

‘I will never allow that,’ he ground out. ‘I would fight for our child through every court in every land.’

The tension that had been cramping Alessandra’s belly throughout the conversation loosened a touch.

She believed him.

Their child would have a father. A proper father.

She just had to hope her trust in this respect wasn’t misplaced. For her child’s sake, she had to try.

‘I’m sorry for being melodramatic. I just need to be sure. We both need to be sure. If we marry then that’s it—we’re married. For better or worse. And, if I agree, I want you to promise that you will be discreet in your affairs.’

His head twisted at her abrupt change of direction. ‘My affairs?’

‘I’m not stupid,’ she said with what she hoped sounded like nonchalance. If she was going to marry him, she would do it with her eyes open.

Christian was an attractive man—oh, to hell with such an insipid description, he was utterly gorgeous. He had the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen in a man, a real crystal-blue that made her think of calm, sunlit oceans. When he fixed them on her, though, her internal reaction was turbulent; a crescendo of emotions she struggled to understand.

The way he’d made her feel that night…

He was used to women throwing themselves at him. She wasn’t so naïve as to believe marriage would tame him. Theirs was not a love match. ‘Our loyalty will be primarily to our child but I do not want the humiliation of your liaisons being paraded on the front pages of the tabloids. All I ask is that from now on you choose your lovers wisely.’

He inhaled sharply before expelling the air slowly. If his jaw became any more rigid she feared it would snap. ‘Anything else?’ he asked icily.

She refused to drop her gaze. ‘Only that if we marry I won’t be taking your name.’

Now she knew how it must have felt like to be glared at by Medusa. Forget mere fire; she could feel her blood turn to stone under his deadly stare.

‘Why. Not?’ he asked through gritted teeth.

‘Because I like my name and I don’t want to have to start all over again. I’ve spent the past seven years building my career but it’s only been in the last few that my name has become famous for my work rather than my heritage and past exploits.’ Alessandra wasn’t prepared to fool herself. She might be famous at the moment for her photography but she didn’t have the longevity that would still make her name roll off fashion editors’ lips if she took months off. Her work as a photographer could quickly be forgotten, others taking her place.

More importantly, although this was something she chose not to share with Christian, figuring she’d pushed him far enough as it was, she didn’t trust that their marriage would survive. If she was a betting girl, she would give them until their baby’s first birthday. By then, Christian would be clamouring for his freedom.

‘You can keep Mondelli as your business name but in our personal life you will be Markos.’

‘Do not tell me what I can and can’t do. Marriage will not make you my keeper.’

‘I never said it would. However, one of the main factors in us marrying is to promote stability and unity. Sharing a surname is a part of that.’

‘If you feel that strongly about it, you can change your name to Mondelli.’

‘That is out of the question.’

‘Why? Because you’re a man? I never took you for a caveman.’

‘It’s the tradition of marriage.’

‘We’re not marrying for traditional reasons. As I pointed out last night, we’re living in the twenty-first century. Plenty of couples marry without taking each other’s surnames. I’m sorry if this disappoints you but I’m not changing my name. It’s non-negotiable.’

‘Our child will take my name.’ He stared at her, the fire in his blue eyes, normally so warm and full of vitality, now turned icy cold. ‘That is non-negotiable.’

‘I can agree to that,’ she said, matching his cool tone. It was one thing refusing to take his name for herself— refusing to let their child take his name too would feel as if she was being cruel for cruelty’s sake.

‘Good.’ The coldness in his eyes thawed a fraction. ‘Does this mean—finally—that you will agree to our marriage?’

‘After all this you still want to marry me?’ she asked, a tiny bubble of amusement breaking through the tension. If Christian wanted a wife he could walk all over, she was certain she’d just proved she wouldn’t be that woman. She didn’t want to be a harridan but she knew she needed to establish the ground rules first. She’d worked too hard to build a life that was all her own to give it up without a fight. For her baby it was easy, but for a man? No.

‘All I want is what’s best for our baby.’

‘As do I.’ If that meant marrying Christian, then so be it. Rocco had always described him as a man of his word—if she didn’t agree, he would refuse to confirm paternity until after the birth. In the meantime, her name would be dragged through the mud again. She would have to cope with swarms of paparazzi hounding her; read the lies that would follow as speculation grew over who her baby’s father was; listen to the taunts that would surely rain down on her. She would have to suffer it alone, just as she had the first time.

And it wasn’t just she who would suffer. Rocco would too and God alone knew her brother had suffered enough at her hands.

But, above and beyond all that, her baby could be the one to suffer the most. Imagining—knowing—what people were thinking of her, were saying about her… It would contaminate her, just like it had the first time. She didn’t want that bitterness and despair to infect her innocent baby.

No, whichever way she looked at it, marrying Christian was the obvious, practical thing to do. Her head knew it. Soon enough her twisted guts would believe it too.

‘How will our marriage work on a practical level?’ she asked, stalling the moment when she would have to say aloud the words agreeing to tie her life to this man beside her.

‘We will lead our own lives.’ His gaze bore into her. ‘Our marriage will be private. We can keep separate rooms and lead independent lives so long as we show unity in public.’

‘I can accept that,’ she agreed.

‘But on our wedding night and honeymoon we will need to share a bed.’ Christian stared at her without blinking, making sure she understood. Alessandra’s approach, blunt as it was, was for the best—neither of them wanted there to be any misunderstandings. They would both enter matrimony with their eyes open but their hearts closed.

Colour tinged her cheeks. ‘Surely we don’t need to go that far?’

‘I want our marriage to be seen as legal in every respect. To protect our child from undue scandal and speculation, people must believe we’re in love.’ He tried to think about their marriage with his business head, consider it as just another merger between two companies. In essence, that was what it would be—a merger. The profit would come from the child they would raise together.

He’d craved isolation since he’d been a small child sharing cramped living space with his mother. His homes were his sanctuary, his space. Even his live-in staff had separate quarters.

Alessandra had been the first woman he’d woken next to and felt a tug of reluctance at having to leave.

He couldn’t remember ever feeling so greedy for someone as he had that night, when he’d wanted her so badly it had been as if he were consuming her. If he hadn’t been concerned that she might be feeling the physical soreness he assumed women must feel after losing their virginity, he would have made love to her all night long.

Her eyes didn’t waver although more colour crept over her face. ‘When you say you want it to be seen as legal in every respect, are you implying that we need to have sex?’

‘No.’ His voice dropped, heat unfurling within him as a memory of a dusky pink nipple floated into his mind. A small gust of wind fluttered across them, causing a strand of her hair to stray across her face. Unthinking, he reached out to brush it away. ‘But we will be married—what couples choose to do in the privacy of their own home is entirely their own business.’

Her throat moved, a subtle movement, but one he recognised.

He leaned in closer. ‘When we stay anywhere that is not under one of our own roofs, we will share a bed. What we choose to do in that bed is nobody’s business but our own.’

Their marriage would be a merger, yes, but not a business merger. This was going to be a merger of two flesh-and-blood people.

Something pulsed in her eyes and he knew with certainty that she was remembering how good it had been between them.

They had been combustible.

All the supressed memories of that night came back in startling colour.

She’d been wild. Carnal. Eager to please and be pleased, to touch and be touched.

Her arousal had been a living thing…

She cleared her throat. ‘And if I choose to sleep and only sleep…?’

Then his balls would probably turn blue.

‘Then you will be left to sleep.’ He let his voice drop further, inching his face closer to hers. ‘But, if you choose not to sleep, you won’t find me complaining.’

‘Is that because you’re not fussy about who you lie in bed with?’ Her words had a breathless quality to them. He could feel the tension emanating from her.

‘No.’ He shook his head in emphasis and pressed his lips to her ear. ‘It’s because you’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever known and I get hard every time I think of how you came undone in my arms.’

He moved back to see her lips part and her doe eyes widen.

‘I understand your opinion of my sex life is less than flattering,’ he said, thinking that she turned the most beautiful colour when she blushed. ‘But, I assure you, I think with the head on my shoulders and not the one in my boxer shorts.’

She swallowed before saying, ‘I think that’s a matter of opinion.’

‘Point proved,’ he said. ‘But, to prove my point, I will not make a move on you until we are legally married.’

Her eyes narrowed but he caught the spark that ignited in them.

‘And, of course, you will still reserve your right to say no.’ He dipped his head to whisper into her ear again, inhaling her scent for good measure.

All his senses heightened. He could feel the heat from her skin; knew the spark that had drawn them together in the first place was still well and truly alive. ‘We’re both going to have to make sacrifices for this to work—the bedroom is the one area where compromise and sacrifice are not needed, where our marriage can be about nothing but mutual pleasure.’

She raised a shoulder and exhaled a shuddering breath that sounded almost like a moan. It was a long moment before she next spoke, breaking the charged silence that had sprung up between them. ‘I will not have sex with you just because it’s expected.’

He pulled away, creating a little distance so he could look at her. ‘My only expectation is that, when we’re in public, we both put on a display of being in love.’

She held his gaze for a fraction longer before blowing out a puff of air and fixing her gaze back on the lake. ‘Bene.’

‘So we are in agreement?’

‘Yes. We are in agreement. I will marry you.’

It was Christian’s turn to exhale. Who would have thought he would feel relief to hear a woman agree to marriage?

‘It would be best to marry as soon as we can—before you start showing.’

‘I don’t want to arrange anything until I’ve spoken to Rocco.’

The mention of her brother’s name hit him like a blow: the metaphorical elephant in the room spoken aloud.

‘We will speak to him together.’

‘It will be best if I speak to him alone. He’s my brother.’

‘And he’s one of my closest friends. He’s not going to be happy about this.’

‘I would prefer it if he gave us his blessing but if he refuses…’ She sighed, a troubled expression crossing her features.

‘We will wait until he returns from his honeymoon,’ Christian decided, although his guts made that familiar clenching motion they did whenever he thought of what his friend’s reaction would be.

Rocco would never forgive him.

He didn’t blame him.

Whatever was thrown his way, he would take. It would be no less than he deserved.

He remembered the first time he’d met Rocco, Stefan and Zayed during his first week at Columbia. He’d never left Athens before that, never mind Greece. New York had been a whole new world. He’d felt out of his depth on every level, especially when comparing himself to his new friends’ wealth and good breeding. He’d had neither and hadn’t been able to understand why they’d accepted him as one of their own.

Even now, a decade on when his own wealth rivalled the best in the world, he still struggled to understand what they’d seen in him.

He was Christian Markos, born a gutter rat without a penny to his name. She was Alessandra Mondelli, born into one of Italy’s premiere families. She had class and breeding. She could be a princess.

In a perfect world she would marry someone from a similar background. Someone worthy of her.

All the same, they might be from disparate backgrounds but on marriage they had common ground: relationships were not for either of them. In that one respect they were perfect for each other. She would never need him or require more than he could give.

And he would never need her.

Messy, complicated emotions would never infect their marriage.

CHAPTER FOUR

ALESSANDRA PRESSED THE button allowing Christian into the building and took deep breaths to compose herself.

It would be the first time she’d seen him in ten days.

They’d spent a couple of days together in Milan, seeing her doctor then a private obstetrician. Both had confirmed that she and the baby were in excellent health. She’d known in her guts everything was well but hearing it vocalised had lifted a weight she hadn’t been aware of carrying until it was gone.

A scan had been taken, a copy of which they had both taken before Christian had left. She’d spent hours gazing at that picture, making out the tiny head and limbs, so imperceptible she had to rely on memory from where the nurse had pointed. Sometimes, gazing hard, everything inside her would constrict, her throat closing so tight that she had to swallow to loosen it. Her beautiful baby. Her and Christian’s beautiful baby.

She hadn’t see him since, all their communication coming via daily text messages and phone calls, during which he filled her in on all the wedding plans. He wanted a Greek wedding so it made sense for him to organise it. She didn’t think she would have been able to handle getting involved anyway. She was having a hard enough time coping with the magnitude of what she’d agreed to.

She’d known Christian since she was twelve and Rocco had brought the Brat Pack—as she privately called her brother and his little gang of university friends—home for a week-long holiday at the family villa. But she didn’t know him.

He drank bourbon rather than his national drink of ouzo. He was a snazzy dresser. His brain was lauded around the world. He was completely self-made. He liked rock music. He’d slept with a quarter of the world’s most beautiful women, the others being shared out between her brother, Stefan and Zayed. He was used to getting his own way. And that was it. The rest was a mystery. She was marrying a stranger.

Dio l’aiuti—God help her—she would have to share a bed with him on occasion.

And, dio l’aiuti, the thought made her heat from the inside.

Ever since that particular aspect of their talk, it had felt as if a glow had been lit inside of her. His lips against her ear, his breath whispering on her skin…the heat it had ignited…

When he entered her apartment, impeccably dressed in a fashionable navy suit and striped pale-yellow tie, her heart made an involuntary skip. It skipped again when she caught his clean, freshly showered scent.

‘My apologies for the delay,’ he said, leaning in to give her the traditional kiss on each cheek.

Two little kisses; two tiny brushes of his lips against her skin, the hint of his warm breath on her…

The lit glow flickered and pulsated low within her, her body responding to his proximity like a bee to a field of pollen.

‘It’s fine,’ she said, stepping away from him and opening her handbag on the pretext of checking her purse. If he looked at her now, he would see the colour she knew had bloomed on her face scorching up her neck.

Christian had been due at her apartment early that morning. He’d called late last night to say he’d been delayed but would make it to her before lunch. She hadn’t been surprised. Men always made promises they had no intention of keeping. They told lies, whether deliberately or not. Even her grandfather, a man she’d thought full of morality, had lied. Only after his death had she learned he’d had an affair decades ago—with her new sister-in-law’s mother, no less. If her grandfather could lie to the wife he loved so much, then what hope was there for anyone else?

The only man she trusted was her brother.

She didn’t want to think what the cause of Christian’s delay could have been.

‘How did it go with the doctor?’ he asked.

‘Good.’ She bit back the question of whether he would attend any further appointments with her. It would save him having to lie. It would save her having to pretend to believe it.

‘Your blood pressure?’

‘Normal. Everything is normal,’ she said, anticipating further questions along the same vein. Feeling more on an even keel and in control of her reactions, she closed her handbag and looked at him.

He was watching her closely. ‘It wasn’t my intention to miss the appointment. There was a crisis at Bloomfield Bank and I had to attend an emergency board meeting.’

‘You don’t have to account for your whereabouts with me.’ She forced a smile. ‘After all, it’s not as if we’re married or anything.’ She couldn’t deny a tiny bit of the cramp in her belly lessened at knowing he hadn’t been with another woman.

He’d given his word not to make a move on her until they married. He’d made no such promise about making a move on another woman.

So long as he was discreet, who he slept with was none of her business.

He laughed, a familiar sound that plunged her back to the meal they’d shared. Of the Brat Pack, he’d always been her favourite, the one she’d privately dubbed ‘the Greek Adonis.’ A woman didn’t need wine goggles to appreciate the strength of his jaw or the dimples that appeared when he gave one of his frequent smiles.

With wine goggles, though, even the most inhibited of females would be putty in his hands. She, the woman who’d thought herself immune to any man’s charms, had been.

He hadn’t even tried. A couple of glasses of champagne on an empty stomach and an aching heart and she’d felt her secret attraction towards him, locked away out of reach, escape and bloom. Like the gentleman he was—and he was a gentleman in the traditional, chivalrous term of the word—he’d walked her home and right up to her door. She’d been the one to kiss him, not the usual two-cheek kiss but one right on his mouth.

The feel of his lips upon hers, the scent of his skin and warm breath…the effect had been indescribable. It had unleashed something inside her, something craven, a side she’d spent years denying the existence of, telling herself she’d rather die a virgin than give herself to a man.

It hadn’t felt like giving herself to Christian. Giving implied bestowing a favour, not the hot mix of desire and need that had made her desperate for his touch.

She could still feel and taste the heady heat of his breath…

But now she was stone-cold sober, her immunity back in its rightful place. Vivid memories might have the power to jolt her senses but they didn’t have the power to knock her off balance. No man would ever have that power. Her body might have a Pavlovian response to him but intellectually and emotionally she was safe.

When they married he could see whoever he wanted. It made no difference to her. All she cared about was her baby. As long as her baby made it safely into this world, nothing else mattered.

Maybe when her baby was placed in her arms, her own place on this earth would make sense.

Maybe then she would lose the feeling she’d carried her entire life that she should never have been born.

Christian sensed a slight change in Alessandra’s demeanour, an almost imperceptible straightening of the shoulders and stiffening of the spine.

She was looking good. She always looked good.

With her long hair loose around her shoulders, she wore faded tight-fitting jeans, a pale-blue cotton blouse unbuttoned to the top of her cleavage, a navy blazer and silver ankle boots with a slight heel. Heavy costume jewellery in shades of red hung round her neck and wrists, large, hooped gold earrings in her ears. Alessandra could wear a sack and carry it off, would still have that beautifully put-together air she carried so well.

Her apartment was the same: chic and beautifully put together, the walls and furniture muted but the furnishings bold and colourful. Giant prints of her work hung on the walls, enlarged, framed covers of Vogue and all the other glossy magazines she’d worked for.

He knew it would be a wrench for her to leave, but a third-floor apartment in the heart of Milan’s fashion district was not a feasible place to bring up a child. He’d raised the subject of her selling it on the phone a few days ago. Her response had been non-committal to say the least.

He’d give her more time to get used to the idea before discussing it again.

‘Are you ready to go?’ he asked.

She nodded, her plump lips drawing together. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

Out in the courtyard at the back of the building, where his driver waited for them, her yellow Vespa gleamed from its parking space. ‘I hope you’re not riding on that thing any more,’ he said, nodding at it.

‘No,’ she answered shortly, getting into the back of the car.

He followed her in, a pang hitting his stomach as he recalled the big beam on her face the one time he’d seen her ride on it—the day of their impromptu date. Another thing pregnancy would force her to give up.

When the car started to move, she turned to look at him, a set look on her face. ‘Christian, let me make one thing quite clear. You are going to be my husband, not my keeper. Do not dictate to me.’

He sighed. ‘Is this about the Vespa?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wasn’t dictating to you. I was satisfying myself that you’re not putting our child’s life at risk by continuing to ride on it, especially here in Milan.’

‘That is exactly what I mean. I don’t need you to tell me the drivers here all approach the road as an assault course that must be beaten—I live here. I might not have a penis between my legs but my brain and rationality work perfectly well.’

‘I never said it didn’t,’ he said, keeping his tone even. ‘But you must appreciate that it is my child you are carrying and it is only right I take an interest in its welfare.’

‘But it is my life. I will not be told what to do.’

‘I am not telling you what to do.’ How he held on to his patience, he did not know. ‘All I’m saying is that having a child changes things…’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ she said, her colour darkening. ‘You think I’m not aware of the responsibility I have to bring our child safely into this world? Do you think I’m not capable?’

‘Alessandra…’ He took a breath and fisted his hands into balls. ‘Will you stop putting words into my mouth? You’re making assumptions.’

Her shoulders hunched before she flopped her head back and took a long breath. ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I have an aversion to being told what to do.’

‘I had already gathered that.’

She cast a sideways glance at him and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Her very pretty ear.

‘As well as my aversion to being bossed around, I also have a tendency to get grumpy when I’m worried about something,’ she admitted, her tone now rueful.

‘You’re worried about Rocco’s reaction to our news?’

‘Aren’t you?’

He reached for her hand and squeezed it.

‘Whatever happens with your brother, nothing will change. You and I will still marry. If he gives his blessing, then that will be beneficial, but if he doesn’t then we will handle it together. Okay?’ he added when she didn’t answer, simply sank her teeth into her bottom lip and tugged her hand free from his clasp.

She nodded slowly, and absently rubbed at the top of her hand where his fingers had rested. ‘Rocco is very protective of me. He always has been.’

‘You’re his sister; nothing will change that.’ Christian was doing his best to project a positive frame of mind for Alessandra’s benefit but was under no illusion about how hot-headed her brother could be. He knew that if the forthcoming meeting was badly handled, their friendship would be ruined.

Alessandra’s lungs had closed up.

The intimacy of the cab, the forced proximity…

Worry about her brother’s reaction faded as Christian’s oaky cologne filled her senses, moisture filling her mouth and bubbling low in her most intimate area.

She pressed her thighs together and dragged out a short breath. It wasn’t enough. She needed air.

There was nowhere to hide.

The traffic outside was atrocious. They were still a couple of streets away from the House of Mondelli, where her brother awaited her. If she were on her Vespa she would be there by now, able to weave in and out of the traffic while turning a deaf ear to the tooting horns.

‘Let’s walk the rest of the way,’ she said. She needed air. She needed to breathe. ‘It’ll be quicker.’

Christian nodded and pressed the button to lower the partition, telling his driver to stop the car. As they were already stationary, this required no effort on the driver’s part.

Alessandra immediately felt better out in the balmy spring air. She loved the sunshine; knew it was the reason her grandfather had left her the villa in St. Barts, so she had a bolt hole to escape to when the gloomy Milanese winter set in. She had no idea yet what she would do with the apartment in Paris he had also left her, but the villa would remain hers until she took her last breath. Which, if the Milanese drivers had anything to do with it, could be sooner rather than later.

They made it to the entrance of the luxurious building without being squashed by any moving vehicles and stepped inside. She smiled at the glamorous receptionists and, with Christian by her side, strode past the large rooms homing all the creative minds that made the House of Mondelli such a success, and through to her brother’s office. His door was closed; Gabrielle, his PA, guarded it with her desk like a sentry. She stood to greet them.

Alessandra cast a quick glance at Christian, experiencing the strangest compulsion to grab hold of his hand. He inclined his head and threw a small, encouraging smile. She couldn’t read his eyes.

Taking a deep breath, she rapped on the door and pushed it open.

Rocco was at his desk talking into his phone. A smile formed on his lips at seeing his sister, his eyes pulling into a question at seeing Christian follow her inside and shut the door behind him.

He ended the call and got to his feet, sidling round his desk to pull her into an embrace. ‘You’re looking well, sorellina.’ Little sister.

‘And you’re looking tanned. Good honeymoon?’

‘Perfetto.’

She didn’t think she’d ever seen him so happy. ‘How’s Liv?’

Somehow his face lit up even more. ‘She’s wonderful.’ Rocco moved on to Christian, giving him a bear hug, which he returned. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’m here to see you,’ Christian said.

If Rocco heard the serious inflection in his friend’s voice he made no sign of it. ‘Alessandra and I have a lunch date—are you joining us?’

‘Rocco,’ said Alessandra, placing a hand on her brother’s arm to get his attention. ‘Christian is here with me. We have something to tell you.’

Immediately the light in her brother’s eyes dimmed, became wary. ‘Tell me what?’

Christian shifted slightly and placed an arm around her waist. The gesture felt almost protective. ‘We’re getting married,’ he said, his tone serious.

Rocco shook his head as if clearing his ears of water. ‘Married?’

‘Yes. We wanted you to be the first to know.’

Alessandra pressed closer to Christian in a show of unity and forced a breezy laugh. If they could make this look and sound as natural as possible, then Rocco should be accepting of their plans. That was what she’d been telling herself for almost a fortnight. ‘I want you to give me away.’

Rocco laughed with her, although not at his usual pitch. ‘You two are getting married?’

‘Si.’

‘My little sister and my best friend?’

‘Si! Isn’t it wonderful?’

‘That’s one way to describe it. When did all this happen?’

‘We bumped into each other when you were in New York.’ She and Christian had agreed to stick with the truth as much as possible. Neither wanted to lie to Rocco. ‘Christian had come to take you out but, as you were in New York, I talked him into taking me out instead. Then, at your wedding we spent a bit more time together and realised our feelings for each other had changed.’ That was the truth as well. How could someone be just a friend of your brother’s if you were carrying his child?

‘When do you hope to marry?’

‘We’ve decided there’s no point in hanging around so we’ve set the date for a fortnight. We’re marrying in Athens.’

‘That soon?’

Christian’s hand brushed against her back as he pulled away from her and took a step closer to Rocco.

Neither man spoke.

Suddenly she became aware that the atmosphere in the office wasn’t the warm bonhomie she’d intended. It was cold. Icy.

As she looked from her fiancé to her brother, taking in the two sets of lips clamped firmly together, her heart sank.

For all his outward amiability, Rocco hadn’t bought a single word she’d said. And Christian knew it.

‘Are you pregnant?’ he asked, looking at her briefly, his tone casual.

She swallowed, stupidly unprepared for such a question. She placed her arm protectively across her waist.

This time he directed the same question to Christian. There was no denying the menace in his stance. ‘Have you got my sister pregnant?’

Christian drew himself up to his full height. It was like watching two silverbacks square up to each other. Both men were equal in stature, both topping six foot by a good few inches, and both kept themselves in extremely good shape.

‘Yes. Alessandra is pregnant with my baby and we have agreed to marry. We both want to do the right thing by our child.’

‘The right thing by your child?’ Rocco snarled, his face ablaze with fury. ‘What about my sister? What the hell were you doing messing with her in the first place?’

‘I’m not going to lie to you,’ Christian said, his tone calm but with a hint of steel underlying his words. ‘Neither of us meant for this to happen. But it has happened—Alessandra is pregnant with my child and I am going to support them both in every way I can.’

‘So she was another of your one-night stands? Is that what you’re telling me?’

Christian didn’t answer, keeping his gaze fixed evenly on Rocco.

‘You said neither of you meant it to happen, so I will ask you one more time: was she just a one-night stand to you?’

‘Yes.’

If Christian intended to elaborate on his one-syllable answer, his words went unsaid when Rocco’s arm shot out like a bullet.

‘Rocco, no!’ But her scream came too late to prevent her brother’s fist connecting with Christian’s nose, a resounding crack bouncing off the walls on impact.

Christian dropped to the floor with a thump.

Immediately Alessandra fell to her knees beside him. Vivid red blood seeped from his nose.

‘What did you do that for?’ she said, switching to Italian, half-shouting, half-screaming, not looking at Rocco, too busy checking Christian’s vital signs. The pulse in his neck pumped strongly, the only blessing she could cling to. She looked up at her brother, who stood frozen. ‘Don’t just stand there—call for an ambulance.’

Rocco’s broad chest heaved, his face a couple of shades paler than it had been when she’d walked into his office. ‘He doesn’t need an ambulance. He’s already coming round.’

He was right. Christian’s lips were moving.

‘At least get some ice,’ she snapped, somehow holding back the tears.

Not sure if she was doing the right thing or not, she carefully lifted Christian’s head and placed it on her lap. Being as gentle as she could, she ran her fingers over his hair, not knowing or caring if she was comforting him or herself. Of all the scenarios that had played itself out in her head, this was not an outcome she had prepared for.

She should be getting used to that.

‘Are you still here?’ she snarled at her brother. ‘He needs ice.’

‘He needs castration.’ He swore loudly. ‘You’re my sister and he’s a playboy—’

‘And you’re a hypocrite!’ she interrupted. ‘The majority of the women you’ve slept with have been someone’s sister. He’s your best friend and you’re just as big a playboy as he is.’

‘Not any more, I’m not—and I’m not oblivious to those other women being someone’s sister, but you are my sister.’

‘No—I was your sister. After what you’ve just done, I will never call you my brother again. I’ll walk myself up the aisle. Now, get an ice pack and then you can get the hell out of my life.’

Through the ringing in his ears Christian heard the sound of muffled talking. Arguing.

Was that Alessandra speaking so emotively?

Through the lancing pain in his face came the realisation that, yes, it was Alessandra—that it was her warm lap supporting his head, her gentle fingers lacing through his hair, her normally calm, husky voice pitched at a much higher octave than he had ever associated it with.

Footsteps left the room, the door slamming with a close.

He winced as the sound reverberated through his pounding head.

Well, that had gone better than he’d anticipated.

CHAPTER FIVE

BACK IN ALESSANDRA’S APARTMENT, Christian lay on the sofa, holding the ice pack in place to the bridge of his nose.

Eyes closed, he heard Alessandra pour fresh coffee out; listened as she padded over the thick rug and placed their drinks on the glass table in front of him.

Gabrielle had brought the ice pack to him, Rocco himself having disappeared from the building.

His old friend had seen straight through their deception, exactly as he’d known he would.

‘You let him hit you, didn’t you?’

He opened his eyes to find Alessandra glaring down at him. She’d changed into a short black skirt, the faded jeans she’d been wearing having been covered in his blood. Her golden legs were bare. Gorgeously bare.

He straightened and put the ice pack down beside his mug.

‘Are you going to answer me?’

‘Yes, I let him hit me.’

‘Why?’

‘Better to let him get it out of his system now than at the wedding.’

‘He’s not coming to the wedding. I’ve told him he’s not welcome.’

Even though the movement hurt, he couldn’t stop the smile forming. ‘You don’t mean that.’

‘Don’t I?’

‘No, you don’t.’ He knew how close the Mondelli siblings were.

‘I told you, I don’t like being told what to do. I’ve had it up to here with my brother thinking he can run my life.’ She slumped onto the single sofa and rubbed her eyes, smudging her make-up. ‘Did you know I always refused to do any work for the House of Mondelli?’

‘I was aware of that—Rocco always said he thought it was a shame, as your fashion shoots are some of the best in the business.’

‘He said that?’ A look of pleasure flashed over her, quickly replaced by another grimace. ‘A few months ago he asked me to do all the photography for the new launch he was working on. For the first time, I said yes. I thought our relationship had reached the stage where he regarded me as his equal, as Alessandra Mondelli, not just as his little sister. I wanted to be employed for the quality of my work, not out of nepotism. I should have known better. He still thinks he knows best and can ride roughshod over my feelings.’

She made a noise that sounded like a choking growl and slumped on the sofa, bending her head forward, her long hair falling like a sheet before her until she tossed her head back and sighed. ‘I love my brother but he has to accept I’m not a child any more. I’m an adult. I make my own decisions. He doesn’t have to like them but he has to at least respect them and if he can’t do that then he can keep away.’

‘Our news was a shock to him. He’ll come round.’

‘I don’t care if he does.’ She blinked rapidly and swallowed. ‘So much for averting a scandal; how long do you think it’ll be before the press learns he hit you?’

‘There’s no need for the press to know anything.’

She arched a perfectly plucked dark brow. ‘We were seen by at least a dozen people leaving the House of Mondelli, you with an ice pack stuck to your nose. Have you looked in the mirror?’ She didn’t give him the chance to reply. ‘You’ve already got two black eyes forming. How are you going to explain that away?’

‘I wear exceedingly dark sunglasses. No one will see my eyes.’

‘That’s not even funny.’

Seeing she was working herself into a state, he leaned forward and spoke forcefully. ‘There will be no scandal. We will cut the press off at its head.’

‘How?’

‘By announcing our marriage. We will send out a press release today.’

She pulled a face. ‘If we announce it now, the press will go into a frenzy.’

‘They will,’ he agreed. During their many phone conversations over the past ten days they’d discussed how to handle the press and had agreed to delay notifying them until a week before the wedding, at which point Alessandra would join him in Athens. All the guests they planned to invite could be relied on for their discretion. ‘But it will be a controlled frenzy and give them something to write about that should, hopefully, supersede any rumour that may come about your brother hitting me. You will have to travel to Athens with me…’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘You’ve already agreed to join me there.’

‘But not for another week.’

‘It will be safer for you. Here, you’re too exposed. The paparazzi can doorstep you.’

‘I don’t care.’ Eyes blazing, she folded her arms across her chest. ‘I can’t go anywhere. I have work commitments. Lots of them. It’s been hard enough trying to rearrange my schedule for the wedding and honeymoon but at least I’ve been able to give the editors and fashion houses I freelance for some notice. For me to come to Athens today means letting them all down at the last minute.’

‘What’s the alternative? For you to stay here in Milan to face the press on your own? You wanted my support and I am trying to give it to you.’

‘Why do I need to leave? Why can’t you stay here?’

‘I need to be in Athens. I have important business commitments coming up this week.’

‘Are you saying your commitments are more important than mine?’

‘No.’ Swearing, he gripped hold of his mug. ‘Yes.’

Looking at her, he could see she was fighting the urge to punch him in the face just as her brother had done.

Such passion.

On the surface, Alessandra Mondelli was the epitome of cool sophistication. Scratch beneath it and the passionate, sultry woman emerged like a vibrant butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.

Knowing he was the only man to have experienced that passion made his chest fill.

Her passion was his. All his.

One day, soon, he would sate himself in her arms again. He knew it and she knew it too; he could see it in the way the pupils of her eyes dilated when their gazes met, the way her breath hitched when they brushed against each other.

She still wanted him.

The thought of them sharing a bed again made his loins tighten and the dread of their forthcoming nuptials taste sweeter.

She would be his again.

For now, though, all thoughts of making love would have to wait. He’d given his word not to make a move on her until after their wedding and he intended to keep it.

‘In the future we will arrange our schedules to accommodate both our obligations, but in this instance I’m afraid my commitments are more important than yours.’

One of Greece’s major banks—one that had weathered the worst of the financial crisis—had been plunged into serious financial trouble and had called on Christian for help and advice. So many of his compatriots were struggling; it was like a constant pain in his chest. He’d been there once: impoverished. Desperate. He gave his assistance gladly.

‘That’s just…’

‘There is another alternative,’ he said, knowing perfectly well it was an alternative she would dismiss out of hand. ‘You can stay at Villa Mondelli. The press won’t be able to touch you there, not with all the security measures that have been put in place.’

‘What, with my brother? I would rather stay in a convent.’

‘Those are your options: stay here alone to deal with the press you hate so much, stay with the brother you’ve just disowned or come to Athens with me where the press can’t touch you.’

‘Then I stay.’

Theos, give him patience. The woman was even more stubborn than her brother. ‘And deal with the press alone? When you hate them so much?’

‘At least I know their comments will be kinder than they were before. I’d much rather they harass me by asking questions about our wedding than harass me by telling me who the latest person to call me a slut is.’

‘They did that?’ He’d seen much of the coverage, knew she’d had a rough time with the press, but had had no idea they had stooped so low as to tell a vulnerable teenager what despicable names people were calling her.

‘That was then. I’m perfectly safe here in my apartment—the press can’t get past the concierge.’

‘Who are these people who called you a slut?’ His brain refused to move on from that piece of information. When he learned who had said such insulting words towards her, he would hunt each and every one of them down. He would make them pay.

The sheer violence of his thoughts shocked him.

All his life he’d used his brains to better himself, only using his fists when it was a choice of fight or flight.

The kids in his neighbourhood had roamed the streets of Athens in packs while he had spent his precious free time with his head buried in books, determined to educate himself out of that life. They’d seen him as a freak.

Often they had lain in wait for him. Between the ages of ten and sixteen he’d been beaten up on average once a month. Always he’d fought back, sometimes more successfully than others. Then, aged sixteen, he’d experienced a monster of a growth spurt, growing six inches in six months. He’d also found himself an early-morning job at the fish market lugging heavy boxes of freshly caught mackerel and sardines. He’d filled out physically to match his new height.

He’d no longer been the skinny, bookish kid and the bullies had known it. After one particular fight, when he’d broken the nose of the ringleader and blackened the eyes of two others, they’d left him alone.

He hadn’t wanted to hit anyone since then. Until now.

How could anyone call Alessandra a slut?

‘Too many to name.’ She answered his question with a shrug.

‘How could they say such things? You were a child.’

‘I was seventeen. Old enough to know better.’

‘Do not tell me you blame yourself?’

‘Only in the respect that I swallowed Javier’s lies.’ Her eyes pierced right through him. ‘I should have known not to trust the word of a man.’

‘Not all men are liars.’

‘Aren’t they?’ She didn’t elaborate. She continued staring at him with the same piercing expression.

‘No!’ he said forcefully.

‘With the exception of my brother, all the men I’ve ever known have been liars. Trusting Javier cost me everything. My grandfather turned into my jailer, the few friends he’d permitted me to have turned their backs on me because their parents didn’t want me corrupting them and Rocco had the humiliation of reading untrue, lewd comments about his baby sister. I’m sorry, but I will never trust you, Christian. All I can do is try and have faith that your indiscretions will be discreet.’

‘I will never humiliate you or disrespect you.’ He rose from his seat, ignoring the throbbing pain across the front of his face, and crouched on his haunches before her. Placing a hand on her neck, he rubbed his thumb over the soft skin.

Theos, one touch of her softness, one inhalation of her scent and his body responded, his groin tightening as memories of burying himself inside her assailed him.

‘You are going to be my wife.’ He spoke the words slowly. ‘If you do not believe anything else, believe that that means something to me. I will take my vows seriously.’

‘I’m sure Javier said the same thing to his wife.’

Christian swore and inhaled deeply.

Alessandra leant forward, matching the intensity of his stare, close enough for his oaky, masculine scent to swirl around her.

His hand was still pressed against her neck, heating her skin. For a moment she lost her train of thought, suddenly pulled back to that night two months ago, his naked body covering hers…

She blinked herself back to the present, grabbing onto his hand and lacing her fingers into his. She squeezed. ‘When Javier’s wife saw those photos of her husband kissing a girl half his age, she must have thought her heart was breaking.’

Those dreadful, incriminating pictures.

Her brother and grandfather had taken a business trip together to New York for a long weekend. The Mondelli housekeeper had taken the day off. Alessandra and the man who was supposed to be giving her private tuition in maths over the long summer holiday had had the villa to themselves for the very first time. They could have done anything.

It had been her suggestion that they go out for lunch at a nearby hotel, famed for its discretion. Javier didn’t live locally. No one would know him.

She’d longed to do something as a normal couple, not have to keep her feelings hidden away, and this had been the perfect opportunity. She’d believed him when he’d said they had to keep their love a secret until she turned eighteen and finished her schooling.

How grown up she’d felt, walking hand in hand with her would-be lover. How naïve she’d been.

They’d dined in the fine hotel restaurant using her allowance to pay the bill, oblivious to the fact that half a dozen paparazzi had swarmed the lobby, awaiting the rumoured arrival of one of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors.

While she’d been blithely oblivious, they’d recognised her in an instant. The photos they’d taken, published the next day across the whole of Italy, had been incriminating. Her and Javier holding hands, stealing kisses that looked a damn sight worse than the chaste kisses they’d actually been.

That was the last time she’d seen the coward. For a whole weekend, while her brother and grandfather had been in New York, she’d had to cope with a siege of paparazzi on her own. Those reporters had been there to witness Javier’s wife arrive at the villa and bang on the door until a guilt-stricken Alessandra had answered it, her fulsome apology ready on her tongue. She’d never had the chance to say the words. As soon as she’d opened the door, Javier’s wife had spat in her face, slapped her and called her a puttana—a whore. The press had caught every frame for posterity.

By the time her brother and grandfather had returned the damage had been done.

‘Why didn’t you ever put your side across?’ Christian asked. If he felt any pain in his fingers he didn’t show it, allowing her to continue squeezing tightly, as if he knew it to be an outward measure of the fury and pain recalling that awful time provoked.

‘I wasn’t allowed. Rocco and Nonno closed ranks.’ She attempted a laugh. ‘They were furious with me.’

‘Why? Your tutor took advantage of you. If they were furious with anyone, it should have been him.’

‘They were furious with him for taking advantage of me, but it didn’t change the fact that I’d been sneaking around with a man almost twice my age. They forbade me from speaking to the press, saying I’d caused enough shame on the family name.’ Even if she’d chosen to defy them, by the time she’d got over the shock that had rendered her virtually mute the press had moved on to its next victim. Alessandra Mondelli’s affair with a married man had been old news. No one had cared for her side.

Christian disentangled his fingers from her grip and muttered another curse as he got to his feet.

The place where he’d rested his hand against her neck suddenly felt cold.

She shivered and rose to her feet to stand before him. ‘If I leave with you today, my career will be ruined. No editor or fashion director will ever trust me again. It’s the only thing I’ve got to hold onto, the only thing that gives my life any meaning.’ How could she expect him to understand that? Her career was all her own. It had taken everything she had to get her name taken seriously and pull herself out from the cloud of scandal.

‘And what about our child? Or does he or she not come into it?’

‘Don’t twist it like that. When our baby is born everything is going to change—I know that, and I’m preparing myself for the change it will bring, but right now I’m healthy and capable of working.’

‘I’m not happy about this. You can’t take risks with your health.’

‘I don’t expect you to be happy about it, but ultimately the decision is mine, so please don’t patronise me about the health aspect—you were there when the doctor said I should live a normal life.’

He threw his hands in the air and shook his head, not bothering to hide his anger or frustration.

She continued speaking before he could open his mouth to argue any further. ‘I will hire a bodyguard for when I leave the apartment—I promise I will protect our baby.’

‘I will hire a bodyguard for you,’ he insisted, looking only slightly mollified. ‘And I want your word of honour that if at any time you feel in any kind of danger you will call me immediately.’

‘I promise.’

He appraised her with narrowed eyes for a moment longer before inclining his head. ‘Then I will have to trust you to keep to your word.’

She certainly deserved that.

Welcome to Athens.

No sooner had Alessandra stepped off Christian’s private jet than two bodyguards appeared from nowhere. They took her luggage and escorted her to the waiting car with its bullet-proof, blacked-out windows.

A week ago she would have thought this overkill. She’d thought her brother was a pain when it came to being over-protective. Rocco had always been protective of her. After Javier, he’d become even more controlling. Her grandfather had been even worse. He’d withdrawn her allowance and curtailed her freedom, which had always been limited, to the point of non-existence. She’d returned to her private all-girls school when the holidays had finished to find he’d given strict instructions not to let Alessandra leave the grounds under any circumstances. This had been particularly humiliating, it being her final year, the school year when more adult freedoms were permitted. But not for her. All trust between her and her grandfather had broken down irrevocably.

She’d spent years breaking free and now, just as her life and freedom were hers and hers alone, she found she was pledging herself to a man with the same controlling instinct she had spent so long kicking back from.

Christian had over-protectiveness down to an art.

He hadn’t merely employed a bodyguard for her, he’d employed an elite squad of hardened ex-soldiers.

Unfortunately they didn’t come with personalities, all having been highly trained never to crack a smile or share banter. In the safety of her apartment building she could forget all about them, but the second she stepped outside they would materialise.

As much as she found their presence stifling, she was grateful. She’d never imagined the paparazzi could be any worse than when she’d been seventeen. She’d been wrong. Eight years ago it had been mostly the Italian press with a handful of Brits thrown in. This time their number included Greeks—lots of them—Americans, French… She swore she’d even heard a Japanese voice throw questions at her. She’d known her engagement to Christian would generate a frenzy but had not been prepared for such madness.

The granddaughter of the great Giovanni Mondelli, a man of such stature he was regarded like royalty; the sister of Rocco Mondelli, the man credited with dragging the House of Mondelli kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, a man who’d recently married one of the most famous supermodels in the world; Alessandra Mondelli, the former scandal-hit teenager who’d become one of the world’s leading fashion photographers: for such a woman to be marrying the self-made Greek billionaire, the whizz of the financial world with the movie-star looks… For the press it was a dream combination.

For Alessandra it was a nightmare. She consoled herself that at least she wasn’t being called a slut any more. She’d kept her dark sunglasses on and answered only one of the hundreds of questions that had been thrown her way over the past week.

‘Are you looking forward to the wedding?’ someone had asked.

‘Of course,’ she’d replied with what she hoped was an enigmatic smile.

She hadn’t been the only target. Christian, his sunglasses permanently attached to his face too, had also been mobbed. As had Rocco, who ignored every single question. Rumours had started circulating in the past few days about the punch, a new frenzy ensuing.

Relieved to be away from the madness, she leaned back in the leather seat and gazed out at Athens, the city that would play a huge part of her life from this moment on.

She’d heard it referred to as ‘the cradle of Western civilisation.’ Even if she’d been unaware of its history, she would have recognised it. It had seeped into the walls, some pristine, some falling apart at the seams. With ugly apartment blocks and majestic buildings, it was a city that managed to be cosmopolitan yet obviously ancient and historic. A city of contradictions.

For the first time she felt something akin to excitement bubble in her veins.

She had six days in this city before she exchanged her vows. From worrying that she would be bored stuck in a place where she knew no one, she now saw a huge opportunity. If she could ever get anywhere. At this rate, she would be lucky to make it to the hotel before the sun set. She’d thought the traffic in Milan was bad…

Eventually, they came to a road with manned security gates that opened slowly and led to an enormous white building with pillars either side of the huge entrance. It was as though she was staring at a palace that had been home to the Greek gods themselves.

A fleet of staff was by her side within seconds of the car coming to a stop, her luggage whisked away while she was taken through to the marble foyer.

‘Don’t I need to sign in?’ she asked when a woman, who identified herself as the general manager, offered to take her straight to her room.

‘No, despinis,’ the woman replied. ‘Everything is taken care of.’

Christian’s work, Alessandra told herself, her belly tightening at the thought of seeing him again. She’d been so busy over the past week that she’d hardly had the time to think of him on anything other than a practical level. Her dreams, though, had been…disturbing. Enough that merely to think of him made her bones feel as if they’d been through a blender.

Pregnancy hormones. That was all it was, she told herself—pregnancy hormones playing with her emotions.

‘Where are all the other guests?’ she asked, following the manager to the lift.

‘Today, you are our only guest. The others will be arriving from tomorrow.’

How strange. She’d never known a hotel to have only one guest before.

Her suite was one of two located on the top floor. She guessed the other had been reserved for Christian.

Stepping into it, she couldn’t help the little thrill that ran through her at the opulent marvel of marble and the stunning views. The back window had a direct view of the Parthenon.

Over the years she’d stayed in many luxurious hotels but the lavishness of this suite had a magical quality to it.

‘Will you require lunch in your room or would you prefer to eat in the restaurant?’ the manager asked.

‘I think I’ll eat on my balcony.’ She had a quick skim of the menu and selected a tomato salad with crusty bread. Nothing fancy, just something healthy to keep her going until Christian joined her that evening…

The same tightening in her belly happened as she thought of him again, her heart rate speeding up to a thrum.

CHAPTER SIX

AFTER A LAZY afternoon spent by the swimming pool, unwinding after a full-on week of work and the morning’s travels, Alessandra was stepping out of the shower when the phone in her room rang out.

‘Ciao?’

‘Good evening, agapi mou.’

A tingle fluttered up her spine to hear his rich tones.

‘Hello, Christian,’ she said, keeping her voice formal. ‘Does this call mean you’re here?’

‘It does. Can you be ready in a couple of hours?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m taking you out for dinner.’

Trying hard to dampen the excitement fluttering low in her stomach, she opened the large wardrobe where a maid had hung all her clothes. Amongst them was her wedding dress.

Her intention had been to buy the first dress that fitted and didn’t make her look like a hag. Her intentions had gone to hell. Her brain had tried to hand over the cash in the first boutique but her heart had overruled it. It wasn’t until the fourth boutique that she’d found The One, the dress that had made her heart want to burst with delight.

She didn’t know what she’d been thinking when she had then parted with a large sum of cash for the lacy white lingerie she’d selected to wear with it.

No, that was a lie: she did know what she’d been thinking. She’d been thinking of Christian.

For now she selected a khaki shirt-dress that fell to mid-thigh. She stared with longing at her five-inch-high red Manolo Blahniks but ended up disregarding them for black strappy sandals with a more reasonable three-inch heel. She had a little life inside her to think of and to totter on sky-high heels was asking for trouble.

She wondered if her own mother had faced such trivial conundrums in her pregnancies. So many questions she would never hear the answer to.

She would give anything for one day—one hour, even—with her mother. One hour to be held in her arms, to inhale her scent and hear her voice.

She prayed her baby never grew up having the same longings: so many hopes and fears, a mountain of them. All that mattered was getting her baby safely into this world.

Accessorising with beaded orange jewellery and dangly ruby earrings, she’d just applied a second coat of matching ruby lipstick when she heard a rap on the main door of the suite.

She pressed a hand to her chest, a sop to trying to control her heart that had galloped at the first knock.

Opening the door, her stomach plunged to see Christian so tanned and gorgeous before her, dressed in a silver suit, tieless, the white shirt unbuttoned at the neck. She’d kissed that neck, remembered vividly its taste…

Their eyes met; there was nothing said for the breath of a moment before she stood aside to admit him.

‘You’re looking good,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ she said, striving for breeziness.

‘Are you ready?’

‘Let me get my bag and we can go.’ The expansive room seemed to have shrunk in the space of seconds and she was glad to escape, if only for a moment.

In the sanctuary of the bedroom, she sat on the corner of the bed and took some deep breaths. Keep it together, Alessandra.

Keep it together?

At Rocco and Olivia’s wedding she’d been too worried about informing Christian of his impending fatherhood to read too much into the raging emotions sleeping with him had provoked. She’d assumed that, once she’d shared the news, her equilibrium would be restored. She hadn’t thought for a minute it would become more unstable around him, an instability that seemed to increase with every moment spent with him.

She would keep it together. She would. She was a pro at it.

Getting to her feet, she grabbed the gold clutch bag off the dresser and strolled back into the living area. Christian was leaning against the dining table, doing something on his phone. As soon as he saw her, he pressed the button to turn the screen off and quickly put it in the inside pocket of his blazer.

‘Everything okay?’ he asked.

She mustn’t question. It was none of her business. None of her business.

Javier had always been secretive over his phone: hiding to answer calls; speaking in hushed tones so she couldn’t overhear him; telling her it was other private students who deserved his discretion. Naïve idiot that she was, she’d believed him, had never imagined for a moment that the reason his phone never left his person was because he was married to a woman who’d lived through one of his affairs before and checked on him constantly.

If Christian wanted to be secretive, then so be it. She had no emotional claim on him. He had no emotional claim on her.

She forced a smile. ‘I couldn’t remember where I’d left my bag.’ What was a white lie in the scheme of things? She couldn’t tell him his appearance had left her feeling so off-kilter she’d needed a moment to catch her breath and her thoughts.

‘Where are we eating?’ she asked, following him out of the door.

‘At Titos, a French restaurant near the Panathinaikos Stadium.’

‘French?’

‘It is considered the best restaurant in Athens.’

She raised her brows. ‘Can’t we go somewhere…Greek?’

‘This is the most exclusive restaurant in Greece. The waiting list is eighteen months long.’

She pulled a face. ‘I like fine dining as much as the next person but, truly, you can’t relax somewhere like that. Please, just for tonight, can’t we go somewhere normal? You live here—you must know the place that serves the best Greek food.’

Something flickered in his eyes.

‘You do know somewhere! Please, take me.’

‘It’s nothing special,’ he said, his voice guarded.

‘Good! Nothing special is exactly what I’m in the mood for. Plus, if we eat somewhere nondescript, the less chance we have of being spotted by the paparazzi.’ They would be circling the city looking for them. They were nothing if not tenacious.

After what seemed an age, Christian gave an abrupt nod. ‘I know a little taverna in Pangrati, a decent area of the city.’

She beamed. ‘Perfetto.’

They both nodded at the reception staff as they left the hotel and got into the waiting car.

‘Can we walk some of the way?’ she asked once they were enclosed in the back.

Christian stared at her, remembering how on their night in Milan she’d insisted they walk to the restaurant, happily tottering in the black stilettos that had displayed her slender yet shapely legs so well.

The dress she wore now showed them off too, golden thigh close to his…

He preferred to walk too. He’d especially enjoyed walking with Alessandra, the refreshing conversation, her obvious femininity without demureness. He’d enjoyed everything about that evening. He’d enjoyed everything about that night. Except for the guilt that had almost crippled him, especially the next morning.

It felt even worse now. Not only had he got her pregnant but he’d lost his friend. He could cope with that if he didn’t feel so damn responsible for Alessandra and Rocco’s estrangement. Even if he couldn’t fix his own relationship with Rocco, he was determined to fix theirs.

‘The driver can take us a little further in and then we’ll walk the rest.’

‘Eccellente. I want to see as much of your home city as I can.’

‘There’s plenty of time for that. In the meantime, how have you settled in? Do you have everything you need?’

‘I’m finding it all a little strange,’ she admitted. ‘I assumed the hotel would be bursting with guests.’

‘Usually it would be.’

‘Did you have all the other guests kicked out?’ She was only half-joking.

‘Not exactly. Alternative accommodation was found for them. Hotel Parthenon is for the exclusive use of our wedding party for the next week.’

‘However did you manage that?’

‘It wasn’t difficult. I own the place.’

Her brows knitted together in confusion. ‘Seriously?’

‘I assumed you knew.’

‘I thought your business revolved around finance.’

‘On the whole it does, but in Greece it’s different. Greece is my home. I love my country but its economy is a mess. Anything I can do to invest and bring money into it, I will.’ Hotel Parthenon had been an obvious place for him to start. He’d discovered it six years before, a shabby, run-down two-star hotel situated on a prime site. He’d paid over the odds for it then set about transforming it, employing local builders and architects to renovate it into the seven-star luxury hotel complete with heliport it was today. Its growing reputation meant it was fully booked all year round.

‘I like that,’ Alessandra said, nodding her approval. ‘I always think people are too keen to disregard their roots.’

‘That’s easy for someone like you to say.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You were born with every advantage. Your roots are something for you to be proud of.’

‘You think?’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Please, tell me, what advantage did I have when my very existence is the reason for my mother’s death?’

Shocked, he momentarily lost his voice. ‘You can’t believe that?’

Confusion flitted over her features as if she’d shocked herself with her own words. ‘It’s the truth,’ she whispered.

‘Ochi!’ No.

‘Si. My mother died so I could live. If I hadn’t been conceived, she would still be here.’

A coldness lodged in his stomach. ‘But you wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t be sitting here now. Our child wouldn’t be growing in your belly.’

Her eyes held his, a slight wobble in them, as if she were trying desperately not to let whatever driving emotion had caused her outburst to gain any further hold.

He could kick himself. ‘I apologise. When I said you were born with every advantage, I meant it in the respect that you were born a Mondelli.’

Alessandra swallowed back bile. She didn’t know where her outburst had come from. It was an outburst that had lived mutely on her tongue since she’d been a young girl made to feel as if she should be grateful for the privileges of her life. As if the fact she’d grown up with money could hide the circumstances of her birth and the knock-on effect that still echoed in Rocco’s and her lives. Their father’s life too, weak and spineless though he was. He’d effectively thrown his life away because he hadn’t been able to cope without his beloved Letizia. Nor forgetting her grandfather, her nonno, who’d spent the last twenty-five years of his life raising his grandchildren while his own son and heir drowned in bottles of alcohol.

All those ruined lives. Ruined dreams. Rocco ripped away from the mother he’d worshipped. And for what? For her? Was one life really a fair exchange for so much misery?

‘No, I’m the one who should apologise. You’re right. Being a Mondelli is a privilege. I’ve been given every material advantage.’

‘I didn’t mean to imply that you were spoilt. I appreciate the Mondelli name has been a mixed blessing for you.’

‘And the Markos name?’ she said, glad to be able to turn the conversation onto him. ‘Has that been a mixed blessing for you?’

He raised a shoulder. ‘The Markos name is nothing special. It doesn’t stand for anything.’

‘Yes, it does. It stands for hard work, determination and guts.’

‘Guts?’

‘Rocco told me you got into Columbia on a scholarship. That alone tells me how hard you’ve had to work to get where you are.’

‘We all have our crosses to bear, whatever background we’re born into,’ he said quietly. He tapped on the dividing window. Amidst a hail of tooting horns, the car came to a stop. ‘We will walk from here.’

The taverna was exactly what Alessandra had been hoping for. Set off the beaten track, its marble tables with checked paper table-cloths were crammed inside and out, every one of them taken. Inside, a man played an accordion, the music only just audible above the raucous noise of the patrons, while pictures of celebrities lined the walls in haphazard fashion above empty bottles of wine with melted candles rammed into them.

Just as she was thinking they would never get a table, a balding man of about sixty wearing a white apron stretched around possibly the largest pot belly she’d ever seen ambled over to them, his arms outstretched. In a flurry of Greek, he pulled Christian into a tight embrace, slapping kisses on his cheeks, all of which Christian returned before stepping back and putting an arm around Alessandra’s waist.

‘Mikolaj—Alessandra,’ he said, before adding, ‘Mikolaj doesn’t speak any English or Italian, agapi mou.’

Her offered hand was ignored as she was wrenched from Christian’s hold and yanked into Mikolaj’s embrace, which finished with an affectionate ruffle of her hair, much as if she were a child.

A small table materialised for them against the far wall. Mikolaj pulled the chair back for her, fussing over her until he was certain she was sitting comfortably—although how comfortable anyone could be when crammed like a sardine was debatable. He plonked a laminated menu in front of her then ruffled her hair again for good measure before disappearing into the throng.

Christian took the seat opposite. The table was so small his long legs brushed against hers. She waited for him to move them but realised there was literally nowhere else for them to go unless he twisted to the side and tripped up all the waiting staff.

She craned her neck around, trying to ignore the heat brushing up her legs. ‘This place is wonderful.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘You like it?’

She nodded. ‘This is exactly how I imagined a Greek restaurant to be. You can feel the energy—you don’t get that in high-class restaurants.’

His eyes crinkled. Seeing it made her realise how tense he’d been up to that point. Although unfailingly polite, a barrier had been put up. Was it being here, in his home city, that had caused its construction? Or had she been so wrapped up in her own problems that she hadn’t fully appreciated the effect their situation was having on him? Or a combination of both?

‘The best thing about this place apart from the food?’ he said. ‘It’s tourist-proof—all the people in here are locals.’

‘Don’t tell me you own it?’

‘No. This is all Mikolaj’s.’

‘Is it always this busy?’ It was a Monday evening, hardly the busiest night of the dining week.

‘Always.’

Alessandra looked down at the menu. It was all in Greek.

‘I can recommend the stiffado,’ Christian said. ‘Beef stewed in a wine and tomato sauce. The stuffed courgettes are good too.’

‘Can I have both?’

He laughed. ‘You can have whatever you like. It’s all good.’

‘Have you eaten everything on the menu?’

‘A dozen times each.’

‘No wonder Mikolaj treated you like his long-lost son.’

Before he could respond, a waiter appeared at their side, notebook at the ready.

‘Shall I order us a selection of meze to start with?’ Christian asked.

‘You know all the best stuff,’ she answered with a grin. Already the bustling, warm atmosphere of the place was easing the tension within her, making her relax in a way she hadn’t since she’d taken the pregnancy test. ‘Go ahead.’

She had no idea what he ordered, the waiter making squiggles on his note pad before bustling off, immediately to be replaced with Mikolaj, who carried a carafe of red wine and a jug of iced water.

‘Do you want any wine?’ Christian asked, knowing better than to tell her not to have any.

‘I’ll stick to water, thanks,’ she said, her cheeks quirking as if she knew what he’d been thinking. As soon as they were alone again, she asked, ‘How do you know Mikolaj? I’m guessing it’s more than you being a good patron.’

‘I have known him since I was small child.’

‘Is he an old family friend?’

‘Something like that.’

Her doe eyes were fixed on him with unashamed curiosity. ‘Something like what?’

‘My mother and I used to live in a room in the attic,’ he supplied, adopting the tone he used to denote the end of a subject.

Alessandra ignored his tone and raised her eyes to gaze at the ceiling. ‘You lived in the attic here?’

‘Yes, here. My mother was a childhood friend of his. When we were kicked out of our old place, Mikolaj and his wife gave us the attic room.’

She looked back at him, her pretty brows drawing together. ‘One room? For the both of you?’

‘Yes.’

‘That must have been hard.’

‘You have no idea,’ he said, more harshly than he’d intended. In those days, Mikolaj had been barely scraping a living for himself and his own family. If not for his incredibly generous heart, Christian and his mother would have lived on the streets. The attic room was given to them for free in exchange for his mother working in the kitchen. She’d been paid a share of the tips. It was all Mikolaj had been able to afford.

When Christian had made his first significant trade, a deal that had earned him a hundred thousand dollars, he’d sent Mikolaj a cheque for half the sum.

Looking back on those early years, it hadn’t been the poverty that had been the hardest to bear. The biggest cross had been living with his mother and her poisonous tongue.

Theos, but he didn’t want to imagine Alessandra losing the spark that made her such a passionate, vivacious person and turning into one of the Furies, as his mother had. He wouldn’t wish it on anyone but especially not her.

‘Do you ever see your father?’

‘No. He left when I was a baby.’

She leaned her elbows on the table and rested her hands on her chin. ‘That must have been hard too.’

‘It was hard for my mother, not me. I don’t remember him.’ He no longer wanted to remember him, although he had as a child, had been desperate to know any detail his mother could spare. As all her details had been disparaging at best, nothing concrete, he’d let his mind fly free to construct him. His father was a superhero who had gone to save a galaxy far, far away—unable to send his mother any money by dint of being in a galaxy far, far away. When that galaxy was saved, he would swoop back to Athens, and the little attic room his wife and son shared, and rescue them.

That fantasy sustained him for a few years until around the age of seven, when he’d overheard a conversation between Mikolaj and his eldest son. They’d been talking about Elena, Christian’s mother.

‘She can’t help the way she is,’ Mikolaj had said. ‘When Stratos left her for that woman, it poisoned her. He packed his stuff and left her with no money when the boy was only six months old.’

Christian had tuned the rest of the conversation out. It had been enough to convince him all his mother’s disparaging comments about his father were true. From that moment on, he’d no longer fantasised about his father. Stratos Markos was never going to swoop in to save them. That would be Christian’s job.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘HAVE YOU EVER tried to find your father?’ Alessandra asked a short while later, her eyes filled with curiosity.

‘What for?’ he dismissed. ‘Why would I want to involve myself with a man who abandoned his wife and child?’

‘I get that,’ she said, pulling a face.

He closed his eyes. ‘Your father is an alcoholic and a gambler. He was incapable of looking after you. He didn’t abandon you. He’s always been a fixture in your life. There’s a difference.’

She laughed contemptuously. ‘I thought you knew my background. My father dumped me on his father before I was a year old. Rocco took care of me from the moment I left hospital. My father wanted nothing to do with me—he still doesn’t. He’s never been there, not for any of the significant events in my life. My first Holy Communion, my Confirmation, the time I represented Milan in the under tens’ gymnastics,’ she said, ticking the events off on her fingers. ‘He wasn’t at any of them. The few times he’s bothered to join us as a family, he won’t speak to me. He’s never looked at me. I was there, I was present and still he didn’t want me. So don’t try and make out I can’t understand what it was like for you, growing up without a father, because my father abandoned me too, and, worst of all, he abandoned Rocco.’

He and Alessandra were like two peas but from pods grown in very different gardens, Christian realised. They’d both been abandoned by the people who should have been there for them. For good or ill, it had shaped them both. The distrust and avoidance of love and relationships.

They were more alike than he’d ever suspected.

Colour had heightened across Alessandra’s high cheekbones, her eyes ablaze with furious passion, the honey-brown a darkened swirl. He’d seen that swirl before, when she’d been pressed against the wall of her apartment.

Theos, she had felt unbelievably good in his arms, as if her contours had been shaped especially for him.

He regarded her carefully, pushing away thoughts of her naked: the way she had wrapped those lithe legs around him and clung to him, as if trying to burrow under his skin. Those same legs were pressed against his at that very moment…

The V of her dress had dipped, exposing the top of her golden cleavage, below which lay breasts that had become plumper since their time together.

What did they look like now? Did they still taste so sweet…?

This had to stop. Right now. Imagining them in bed together was what had got him into all this trouble in the first place, sitting in that Milanese restaurant, fascinated by her plump lips, imagining them over his…

He would not touch her again until they were legally man and wife. He’d given her his word. He might have screwed things up but he was determined to do the right thing from here on in. On paper, his track record with women was less than complimentary. Given that and her own history, he could understand why Alessandra would be untrusting. It was down to him to prove himself to her.

Theoretically, it should be easy. Christian loved sex—what red-blooded man didn’t?—but he’d never allowed his libido to run his life. With Alessandra… The longer she kept those gorgeous doe eyes fixed on him, the more his blood swirled with the need to consume her again. Everything about her spelled temptation, from the glossy chestnut hair that begged to have his fingers run through it to the toned golden arms his hands itched to trace. Every time she opened her mouth to speak, drink or eat, he would watch those beautiful lips and ache to press his own to them, to feel the heat of her breath merge with his.

Soon. Soon she would be his again.

‘At least you had Rocco,’ he said softly, thinking he would have given anything for a sibling when he’d been a child. It hadn’t been until he’d met his fellow Columbia Four that he’d realised what had been missing in his life: true friendship.

‘Emotionally, I had Rocco,’ she conceded. ‘But he’s seven years older than me. By the time I was eleven he was at university, thousands of miles away. My grandfather loved me but he had no experience of raising girls and preferred to leave me in the hands of the household staff.’

‘Our lives have been very different,’ he said, choosing his words with care. ‘It’s pointless comparing them. You have lived yours and I have lived mine.’

‘How has it been different?’ she pressed, leaning forward.

‘It just was.’

‘But how?’ A troubled look flitted over her face. ‘Christian, we are marrying in five days. I don’t want to marry a stranger.’

He reached for his wine and took a swallow. ‘You, agapi mou, come from a world of glamour and money. You have no comprehension what it was like for us. We were so poor that for a whole year I went without shoelaces—trivial in the scheme of things but imagine it for a minute. I arrived at university with only one change of clothes. I was the child people like you pretended not to see.’

Alessandra was like one of those mythical creatures he had watched swish past this very taverna’s front while he’d swept the floor. Unobtainable. Better than him. Better than he could ever be no matter how much money was held in his bank account.

Angry colour stained her cheeks, and she opened her mouth, surely to argue with him, before she visibly controlled herself. The outrage that had sparked in her eyes softened. ‘Maybe you’re right that I can’t understand what your childhood was like. But I would like to try.’

He didn’t want her to understand. Christian wanted her to remain untouched by the deprivation and misery that had sucked his mother down a black pit, turning her into a bitter woman who, even if presented with a glass three-quarters full would still regard it as being a quarter empty. All the riches and success in the world hadn’t been enough to earn his mother’s love.

He had no memory of the happy, vibrant woman Mikolaj assured him she had once been. Love that had turned sour had soured her, marking her with such blackness that nothing he’d done had been enough to turn it into a lighter shade of grey.

He didn’t want that for Alessandra. Never for her.

Alessandra needed protection from it before it infected her too.

‘We’ve had a good response from all the wedding invitations,’ he said, deliberately and overtly changing the subject.

One hundred and fifty invites had been couriered across the world. It seemed even heads of state could drop commitments when it suited them and, with all the hype already surrounding their ‘whirlwind courtship,’ as the press was dubbing it, their wedding was shaping up to rival Rocco and Olivia’s as Wedding of the Century. One of the British glossies had offered one million pounds for exclusive rights. They had, politely, ignored the offer. He liked that Alessandra hadn’t been tempted to accept, one of the many ways she differed from all the other women he’d been with.

But wasn’t that the reason he’d been with those women? Because he could see the pound signs ringing in their eyes and so knew there was absolutely no danger they could ever develop anything like a healthy—or unhealthy, depending on your point of view—attachment to him? He hadn’t needed to protect those women from himself.

Her eyes sparked again before she sank back into her seat, gazing at him with a thoughtful expression.

‘All but a handful have replied and all in the affirmative,’ he added.

After too long a beat, she asked, ‘What about Rocco? Has he replied?’

It had been at Christian’s insistence that her brother had been invited. Left to Alessandra, he would have been ignored, something he knew she didn’t mean, her pride and anger doing the talking for her. It would break her heart to walk up the aisle of the chapel in the grounds of the hotel without her brother on her arm.

‘No,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘He hasn’t replied yet.’ And neither had Rocco responded to the dozen emails and text messages he’d sent to him, entreating him not to abandon his sister. Rocco hadn’t replied to a single one of them. He’d ignored all the messages and calls from Stefan and Zayed too.

The Columbia Four had been broken, just as he’d known they would be.

At least Stefan and Zayed were coming to the wedding. He would need his friends there. But not as much as Alessandra needed her brother.

If he had to get on his bended knee and beg, he would get Rocco to their wedding.

‘I sent a bridesmaid dress to Olivia,’ Alessandra blurted out, her cheeks staining with colour.

‘Have you heard back from her?’ he asked hopefully. If anyone could get through to Rocco, it would be his wife.

She shook her head. ‘I didn’t expect to. Her loyalty is with Rocco, not me.’

Conversation paused when a waiter arrived at their table laden with plates of steaming food.

Once they had helped themselves to a little of each meze, Alessandra said, ‘Are many of your family coming?’

‘I don’t have any family.’

She looked confused. ‘What about your mother?’

‘I haven’t invited her.’

‘Why not?’

‘We do not want my mother at our wedding.’

‘Why not?’ she repeated.

‘Trust me.’ He dipped some pitta bread into the hummus and popped it into his mouth, leaving her in no doubt that, as far as he was concerned, this thread of discussion was over.

Her eyes glittered with incredulity, as if to say, trust you?

Instead of arguing with him, she took a drink of water and allowed him to steer the conversation to innocuous small talk about music they liked and films they had both seen and enjoyed. Their tastes were surprisingly similar.

Theos, she was so easy to talk to; she had a way of fixing her honey eyes on him and making him feel he was the only man to exist in the world.

To know he was the only man to have tasted her delights and to imagine tasting them again made him feel as if he had heated syrup running through his veins. It wasn’t just the contents of his trousers that stirred to be with her— everything felt heightened.

In that respect, the day of their wedding couldn’t come fast enough.

The hotel was in silence when they returned. For the first time Christian regretted having the entire complex to themselves. There was no one—other than the handful of duty staff—to distract his attention away from Alessandra.

His fiancée.

She’d taken the hint and stopped digging for information on his past, although something in her eyes had warned him not to expect her silence to last for long. Instead, they had relaxed into easy conversation, just as they had on their one real date together. As on that night in Milan, he’d found his eyes drawn to her lips. They fascinated him. She fascinated him.

What was it with this woman? he wondered as they climbed the private lift to the top floor. His awareness of her was off the charts. His body reacted to everything, from the way her mouth moved to her husky laugh, to the way she smoothed her hair back to keep it from her face.

Alessandra’s eyes had been as firmly fixed on him as his had been on her. She hadn’t drunk any alcohol but he recognised the signs of inhibitions loosening. Just as they had that night in Milan.

He would not act on it. Not tonight. Not until they were legally man and wife.

Man and wife.

Three words he would never have put together with himself and, he knew, Alessandra would never have put with herself.

If he were being honest, he would have to admit that, if someone had put a gun against his head and said he had to choose one woman of all the women he’d been with to marry and have a baby with, Alessandra would have topped the list. All the other women had been fun and flirty but without an ounce of substance. Exactly the way he’d liked them. No commitment, no emotions. No chance of them falling in love and that love turning into bitterness.

Alessandra had a fun and flirty streak in her but she also had substance by the barrel. Her emotions were right there on the surface, no pretence, no subterfuge and, Theos, she was sexier than any mortal had a right to be.

He’d spent half the evening fantasising about those luscious lips.

They reached the door to her suite.

‘Thank you for a lovely evening,’ she said, leaning against the wall by the door. Her eyes were wide; even under the soft lighting he could see the dilation of her pupils.

‘It’s been my pleasure.’

And it had been.

He didn’t want the evening to end.

What was there to stop him leaning in for a kiss?

Nothing.

Except he’d given his word that nothing physical would happen between them again until they were legally married and he would keep that promise even if his testicles exploded with frustration.

‘Are you working tomorrow?’ She rubbed a hand up her arm, the movement pushing her breasts together. The image of dusky pink nipples immediately floated into his mind and with it came the thickening of his blood he was fast associating to feeling when with her.

He had to assume it was a simple case of forbidden fruit tasting sweeter. Like the child in the sweet shop who had no money and salivated over every piece of delicious confectionery on offer.

‘Yes. Some of our guests are arriving in the evening. I should be back to greet them with you.’

‘I guess this will be the first public display of our love and unity,’ she said, an ironic smile whispering across her face.

He palmed her cheek and rubbed his thumb over the soft skin. He could do that much without breaking his vow. ‘Can you handle it?’

‘Can you?’

‘For the sake of our child, yes, I can.’

Her eyes held his. She raised a hand and pressed it to his fingers still resting against her cheek. ‘Then I can too.’

Alessandra was certain he was going to kiss her. She recognised the look in his eyes, the desire in them that darkened the blue. She’d seen that look before, right before she’d pressed her lips to his in her apartment…

He stepped away before either of them had the chance to act on it, dragging his thumb down her cheek one last time.

‘Sleep well, agapi mou,’ he said, bowing his head, then turning on his heel and striding down the corridor to his own suite.

She didn’t know if the breath she expelled was one of relief or disappointment.

After yet another unsettled night, Alessandra got out of bed early, not long after the sun had begun to rise.

Showering quickly, she shrugged on a short, lime-green sundress and slid her feet into a pair of wedged espadrilles, then grabbed her camera and headed out of her suite. As she made her way up the corridor, she passed Christian’s room.

Was he still sleeping?

He’d been as good as his word yesterday, arriving back from his busy day twenty minutes before their first guests had arrived. They’d spent the evening glued to each other’s side, laughing and joking. At one point he had leaned in to whisper into her ear.

‘I think we’re convincing them,’ he’d said. At least, that was what she thought he’d said, the feel of his hot breath against her skin turning her brain to mush in less than a second.

Dio, what was he doing to her?

Was it any wonder she couldn’t sleep?

She’d spent years believing marriage and babies would never be in her future. Sexual relationships had been consigned to the same void: not for her. No messy emotions to contend with, no lies for her ears to disbelieve, no truths for her eyes to avoid. Once the dust had settled with the fall-out over Javier’s lies, she’d come to the conclusion that living a life of solitude was the best for her.

Other than her brother, she’d effectively been alone since birth. Her grandfather had controlled every aspect of her life, from the food she ate to the clothes she wore to the friends she was allowed—but always remotely, Alessandra another tick on his daily to-do list, his directives adhered to by the many members of the Villa Mondelli staff. She’d longed for someone to want to be with her for her, not because they were paid to be or because she’d passed some kind of wealth and social standing test, but for her. She’d truly believed Javier had seen beyond the surface but it had been a lie that had shattered her.

All the protections she’d placed around herself since those awful, lonely days were crumbling at the edges.

In three days she would be pledging her life, her future, to Christian Markos. How could she keep her emotions in a box if she had to share the bed with him occasionally?

One night: that was all it had taken. She’d watched him sleep, her chest clenched so tightly she’d fought for air.

She needed air now.

She wandered to the end of the corridor and climbed the stairs that led up to the roof terrace.

Their wedding was three days away but already a huge transformation was taking place for the party they would be having there once the nuptials were done. White tables and chairs were laid out to the specifications of their wedding planner. She stared at what was to be the top table, a sharp pang lancing her as she thought of sitting there without either her grandfather or her brother by her side.

A part of her wanted to call Rocco, was desperate to hear his voice. But she would not. Christian still bore the remnants of the punch Rocco had given him, the black eye now a pale yellow, but still evident if you looked closely enough. Unless he was prepared to apologise and accept her marriage, he could stay away.

Forcing her thoughts away from her brother, she headed to the back of the terrace, the part that overlooked the huge gardens. Far in the distance sat the whitewashed chapel they were to marry in. It gleamed under the morning sun, as if it were winking at her. She readied her camera and fired off a couple of shots.

She much preferred taking photos of people but one day she wanted to be able to show her child everything about their parents’ big day. She’d been nine when she’d stumbled across her own parents’ wedding photos. Until that time she’d never believed her father had ever smiled, not once in his whole life. But, of course, it had been the pictures of her mother that had meant the most to her.

Whenever she was asked the question of who her biggest influences were as a photographer, she always said Annie Leibovitz and Mario Testino, but in truth it was her parents’ wedding photographer. He had brought them to life in a manner that had touched her deeply and made her see them as people in love.

She wondered if Christian had photos of his parents’ wedding day and if he ever looked at them.

Christian. It disturbed her how badly she wanted to know everything about him, to understand everything that made him tick, everything that had shaped him. The pieces were coming together but it was like a semi-filled photo album with pictures missing.

Resolve filled her. She looked at her watch. If she hurried, she should be able to catch him before he left the hotel for his first appointment of the day.

CHAPTER EIGHT

MINUTES LATER SHE knocked on his door, her camera still slung round her neck.

She sensed movement behind the door before it opened, sensed him peering through the spyhole.

And there he stood, skin damp, hair wet…and with nothing but a towel wrapped around his hips.

‘Sorry; I’ve caught you at a bad time,’ she said, having to fight to get her vocal cords to work properly and not stammer.

‘Not at all. Come in.’ He stood aside to admit her into his suite.

She stepped past him, moistening suddenly dry lips.

Dio, was he naked beneath that towel?

Her arid mouth suddenly filled with moisture.

‘Is there a reason you’ve come to my suite so early, agapi mou?’ he asked, a smile playing on his lips, as if he knew exactly what was going on beneath her skin.

‘No.’ She blinked sharply. ‘Yes. Do you want to get dressed before we talk?’

‘I’m good.’

‘Please?’

‘Does the sight of me undressed disturb you?’

‘It makes it hard for me to think straight,’ she admitted, wishing she could think of a decent lie.

‘That is good.’

‘It is?’

‘The thought of you naked makes it hard for me to think straight too. So, we are even.’

‘You think of me naked?’ Did she have to sound like a breathless imbecile?

The smile dropped. He closed the distance between them and inhaled deeply.

His voice dropped to a husky whisper. ‘All the time. I’ve just thought of you while I showered, imagining you sharing it with me.’

She swallowed. Was he suggesting what she thought he was…?

His lips brushed against her earlobe. ‘Until we are legally married I will have to satisfy myself with memories of our night together in Milan.’

Her skin fizzed beneath the warmth of his breath while heat such as she had never experienced surged through her, settling in the V of her thighs. He stepped closer still and placed a hand on her thigh, close enough that she could feel his erection jut through the cotton of his towel and press against her belly.

She tilted her head back and gazed into his eyes. It was there, that desire: stark, open, unashamed.

What would he do if she were to loop her arms around his neck and kiss him? If she were to clasp his towel and yank it off him…?

He must have read her mind for his lips brushed against her ear again. ‘Anticipation makes fulfilment taste so much sweeter.’

She pulled away. ‘Do you know that from experience?’

A strange look came into his eyes, a half-smile tugging on his lips. ‘Only in a professional sense. I look forward to finding out if it’s as sweet when it comes to us making love again.’

‘I thought you said it would depend on whether I wanted anything to happen,’ she said, her voice hoarse.

‘And it will.’ Now his eyes glittered, no mistaking the feeling behind them. ‘But we both know the anticipation is driving you crazy too.’

While Alessandra stood there, unable to deny what he’d said, too full of the heavy, pulsating thickness swirling through the very fabric of her to think clearly, Christian strode into the bedroom of his suite.

‘So, what did you want to see me for?’ he asked, disappearing from view.

Forcing her brain to unfog itself, she followed him to the door but stopped at her side of the threshold.

She took a moment to compose herself, but that very composure almost fell to ruins when he emerged back in view, now wearing a pair of black boxer shorts that only enhanced his strong physique.

He opened his dressing-room door and disappeared again, re-emerging moments later with a pair of grey trousers on. Looking at her, he slipped his arms into a pale blue shirt. ‘Alessandra?’

‘Sorry.’ She put her hand to her mouth and cleared her throat. ‘I just wanted to discuss the guest list.’

‘Everyone has accepted.’

‘Apart from Rocco?’

He nodded, his mouth tightening.

She watched as he deftly did the buttons of his shirt up.

‘I think you should reconsider inviting your mother,’ she said.

He didn’t react, other than a slight narrowing of his eyes.

‘It doesn’t feel right, us marrying without you having any family there.’

‘You haven’t invited your father,’ he said pointedly.

‘That’s because my father is an alcoholic who likes to pretend I don’t exist. She’s your mum—wouldn’t she want to see her only child get married?’

‘Just drop it. She’s not coming and that’s final.’ He tucked his shirt in and pulled the zip of his trousers up.

‘No. I won’t drop it. If you won’t invite her then can you at least tell me why?’

His mouth set in a forbidding line, he reached for the silver tie on his bed and walked over to the mirror on the wall, his back to her. He met her eye in the reflection.

‘No. I can’t.’

‘Why not? Christian, we’re getting married in three days. You know everything about me and my past—what is so bad that you don’t want me to meet your mother? Are you ashamed of her or something?’

‘Or something about sums it up,’ he said grimly. ‘But, no, I’m not ashamed of her.’

‘Really? Because it looks like you’re ashamed of her from where I’m standing.’

His nostrils flaring, his jaw clenched tight, he knotted his tie. ‘Can you not take my word for it?’

‘I’m sorry, but no.’ This was too important a topic to back down from.

He must have seen something in her reflection that made him read the stubbornness of her thoughts. He shook his head angrily. ‘If it means that much to you, I will show you.’

‘Show me what?’

He straightened his shirt, then turned back to face her. ‘I’ll take you to meet her. You can see for yourself why I don’t want my mother anywhere near our wedding.’

The car came to a stop outside an immaculate two-storey house in a quiet Athenian suburb.

No sooner had the engine been turned off than Christian got out, not bothering to wait for the driver to open the door for him.

The entire drive had been conducted in silence, Christian sitting ramrod-straight, only the whiteness of his knuckles betraying what lay beneath his skin.

It was a demeanour Alessandra had never seen from him before. It unnerved her.

That he’d cancelled his first appointment of the day had unnerved her even more; that, and the grim way he’d said, ‘Let’s get it over with.’

It was with a deep sense of dread that she followed him out of the car and up the small driveway.

A tall, thin woman with short white hair appeared at the door, lines all over her weathered face, her thin lips clamped together in an obvious display of disapproval.

Wordlessly, she turned on her heel and walked back inside, leaving the door open for them to follow.

The house itself was pristine, a strong smell of bleach pervading the air.

There was nothing homely about it. What could have been a beautiful home was nothing but a carcass, sanitised functionality at its best.

If Elena Markos could speak English, she made a good show of hiding it. She made no show of hiding her disdain for Alessandra, refusing her hand when Christian introduced them, and looking through her when Alessandra said, ‘Hárika ya tin gnorimía,’— ‘pleased to meet you’—a phrase she’d practised with the girl who’d brought breakfast to her suite that morning after Christian had grudgingly agreed to bring her here.

They gathered together in the immaculate kitchen, where the stench of bleach was even stronger. No refreshments were offered.

Alessandra might as well have been invisible. All of Elena’s attention was on her son. She was speaking harshly to him in quick-fire Greek, whatever she said enough to make the pulse in his jawline throb. When he replied, his answers were short but measured. At one point he seemed to be the one doing the talking rather than the listening, his words making Elena dart her blue eyes to the stranger in the midst, a sneer forming on her face.

In all her twenty-five years, Alessandra had never sat in such a poisonous atmosphere as this, or felt as unwelcome.

There was something almost unhinged in Elena Markos’s demeanour. Her eyes were the same blue as Christian’s but were like a frozen winter morning without an ounce of her son’s warmth.

Simply imagining being raised by this woman made her skin feel as icy as Elena’s eyes. But Christian couldn’t leave it to imaginings. He’d lived it, every cold, emotionless second.

Was it any wonder Christian eschewed any form of emotional entanglement when this was what he’d grown up with?

Her mind flitted back to their many conversations at Mikolaj’s taverna. She’d said the name Markos stood for guts and determination but had not appreciated then exactly how great his determination must have been, not just to drag himself and his mother out of poverty but to keep his humanity.

Mikolaj. She recalled the obvious affection between the two men. Surely it was from this man Christian had learned to form real human bonds? It soothed her to know he hadn’t been completely alone in his childhood.

So much for the couple of hours Alessandra had anticipated spending there. After twenty minutes, Christian took her hand and said, ‘We’re leaving.’

‘Already?’

‘Now.’

Elena glared at them, her eyes like lasers.

When they reached the door to leave she gave what Alessandra assumed was supposed to be a laugh.

‘Fool girl,’ she said, her accent thick. ‘Marry fools. He kill you heart.’

Alarmed and not a little scared, Alessandra nodded weakly, squeezing Christian’s hand so tightly her blood screamed for circulation.

Nothing was said until they were back in the car and moving, both pressed against their respective doors.

‘What did you think of my mother?’ Christian asked, amusement and bitterness both vying for control in his voice.

Alessandra was unable to do anything but raise her shoulders and blow air out of her mouth.

That had to be the most surreal experience of her life, like stepping into some parallel universe where poison ivy grew instead of roses.

‘Do you understand now why I don’t want her at our wedding?’

‘I think so.’ She shook her head some more. She could still taste the acrid atmosphere, overwhelming even the cloying bleach. ‘What did she say to you?’

‘The usual. That I’m a useless son for leaving it so long between visits; that her house isn’t good enough for her; that the house is too big for her, that it’s too small, that her car is getting old. The usual.’

‘You bought the house for her?’

‘It’s the third house I’ve bought for her—the other two didn’t match her needs. I buy her a new car every year. I give her a large allowance. It’s never enough. I could give her my entire fortune and it wouldn’t be enough. If she came to the wedding, she’d spend the day complaining. Nothing would be good enough for her, and when she isn’t complaining she’ll be telling all our guests about my no-good bastard of a father who broke her heart and deserves castration without anaesthetic.’

His father’s desertion and betrayal had shattered her. Whatever love had once resided in his mother’s bones had been destroyed, leaving nothing but the toxic shell of the woman she must have once been. Christian understood it, could see how she had become like that. Stratos Markos hadn’t just walked away from her, he had walked away from the child they had created together—that was how little she had meant to him. He had wanted no part of her, so worthless that their baby meant nothing to him either.

‘Has she always been like this?’ she asked, her husky voice stark.

‘All my life. She thinks all men are like my father—that’s what she was saying to you when we left, that you’re a fool to be marrying me and that I’m going to break your heart.’

Alessandra’s shock was palpable. ‘She said that about her own son?’

‘She also said it would be kinder for me to rip your heart out now—you forget, agapi mou, that I am my father’s son, something she never lets me forget. In my mother’s world, all men are liars and cheats, especially those with the name of Markos.’

Her doe eyes widened, full of sympathy. ‘You’re not to blame for your father’s actions.’

‘I know that.’ But right then he didn’t want to hear any platitudes. A coldness had settled in his chest, bearing down on him.

It was always the same after he visited his mother. Regardless of the heat outside, inside all he felt was compressing ice.

‘And it’s not fair for her to label all men as bastards because of the misdeeds of one.’

‘But do you not believe that yourself?’ he said roughly. ‘That all men are scum?’

She swallowed, her eyes dimming as if in confusion. ‘I don’t hate men, I just don’t trust them.’

What would it take to get her to trust him? If she’d taken him at his word he would never have had to bring her here.

He wished he could demand it of her, as if trust were like a tap that could be turned on and off at a whim.

After a long pause, he said, ‘We’re lucky we both know how destructive love can be. We won’t fall into the trap our parents fell into. Our child will never have to deal with parents whose love has turned to bitterness and recrimination.’

Their child wouldn’t have to deal with his or her parents loving each other at all. All the love would be reserved for their child and only their child.

He exhaled slowly, waiting for the chill in his chest to lessen but it continued to cling to him like a thick, cold fog.

He hadn’t expected anything different from his mother; he was more or less immune to it. It had been witnessing Alessandra’s visible shock at it all that had really set the cold in, had brought the old feelings and memories hurtling back.

The empathy shining from her eyes had been too much.

He’d never introduced his mother to any of his friends or lovers before. His mother had her own special compartment in his life. He’d long ago accepted that she wouldn’t change, that no matter how he succeeded in life it would never be enough for her. Even the news of being a grandmother had failed to elicit a smile. She would never love him.

Far from repelling Alessandra, his mother’s behaviour had elicited her sympathy, her empathy: towards him.

He didn’t want her pity.

She was getting too close; he could feel it.

Any closer and she’d be able to see the gutter rat who lived in the blackness of his heart.

Christian’s driver dropped Alessandra back at the hotel before taking Christian to his offices.

A dozen more guests had arrived while they’d been at his mother’s house. It amazed her that so many super-wealthy and famous people were able to drop their commitments for what was essentially a free holiday, but surprisingly their presence worked in her favour, distracting her thoughts from their visit to Christian’s mother.

Every time she closed her eyes she saw the laser glare of Elena Markos’s eyes and she wondered how Christian had endured living with such coldness.

That he had dragged himself out, turned it around and made something of himself only added to what had been a slowly growing admiration towards him. That admiration had now accelerated.

Although she was suffering a large dose of guilt for forcing the issue, she was glad they’d gone. Her understanding of the man she was going to marry was growing by the day.

She spent the rest of the day mingling with their guests, some of whom she actually knew, lazing by the pool, playing cards, drinking non-alcoholic cocktails. It was fun, but she wished Christian could be there to enjoy it too. He worked so hard, just like her brother.

Maybe he would kick back and relax when they went on their short honeymoon. She hoped so. He deserved it.

She headed back to her suite late afternoon and had a long soak in the sunken bath, already looking forward to the evening meal which Christian had said he’d be back for.

As she slipped into a red tunic dress, she realised that there hadn’t been a single minute when she hadn’t thought of him. The thought was like a jolt, enough to make her hands tremble, making it hard for her to apply her make-up.

She’d just regained her equilibrium when there was a knock on her door.

And there he stood, wearing the same suit she’d seen him change into that morning in his suite but with the tie removed and the top three buttons of his shirt undone, exposing the top of his bronzed chest.

Finding him there sent a huge surge through her, making her heart pump and her pulses race. Dio, the man was divine. In all ways.

‘I thought I should let you know I’m going to New York,’ he said as he stepped into her suite.

‘Okay. When’s that?’

‘I’ll be leaving for the airport in a few minutes.’

His words had the effect of making her heart sink to her knees. ‘Are you kidding with me? You’re leaving now?’

Dio l’aiuti, was he getting cold feet?

‘It’s only for a couple of nights—I’ll be back Friday evening.’

She forced her voice to remain calm. ‘We’re getting married on Saturday.’

‘I’ll be back in plenty of time.’

A little distance was all Christian needed. Distance away from Alessandra, time to clear the coldness on his chest that still hadn’t shifted. Time to track her brother down and force him to listen.

‘I thought we were supposed to be putting on a united front?’

‘We have been. Our guests will understand.’

‘But these are our guests. I’ve completely rearranged my schedule to be here this week so we can entertain them together and convince them that we’re the real deal.’ The brightness of her welcome had cooled considerably.

‘This is my life, Alessandra. I warn you now, there will be plenty of occasions when I have to fly off at a moment’s notice.’

She eyed him, lines appearing in her brow. ‘And what if I have to fly off at a moment’s notice? Will you show me the same latitude?’ The challenge was there, from the jut of her chin to the tone of her voice. ‘I have a career of my own too, remember?’

‘Our marriage is going to take time to shake down,’ he conceded, wishing he could be in his jet right now. He didn’t want to deal with her anger or acknowledge the suspicion emanating from her eyes. That was not what they were about. They were two individuals able to lead their lives to their own needs, not justify their whims and absences to each other. He shouldn’t feel any guilt. ‘We will find a path that suits us both.’

She nodded slowly but when she spoke her voice was fractionally warmer. ‘So long as you don’t expect all the compromise and sacrifice to come from my end.’

‘I don’t expect that.’

‘Good.’ After a moment of silence, she jerked her head in another nod. ‘Have a safe trip.’

He mimicked her movement. ‘I’ll see you at the chapel.’

CHAPTER NINE

ALESSANDRA STARED AT her reflection. She’d been primped and preened by an army of beauticians and now she was ready.

Ready?

She would never be ready. Not for this.

But it had to be done.

She had to marry Christian and she would do it alone.

Sebastian and Zayed, who had arrived together the night before, had both offered to give her away. She’d been touched by the offers but had declined. They were there for Christian, not her.

There were only two people she would have wanted to walk her down the aisle and one of those was dead. The other hadn’t even had the courtesy to respond to his invitation.

She straightened her spine. It wasn’t as if this would be a real marriage. This wedding was going ahead for one reason and one reason only: their baby. That was what she needed to focus on. It was all she should focus on—not Christian or the way he’d flown off to New York at a moment’s notice. Or her suspicions that there was more to his impromptu trip than business. Or those horrible hours waiting for him to return while the cynical part of her brain had thrown taunts that he wouldn’t be coming back, that he’d abandoned her. Just like her father had.

Do. Not. Trust.

She had to trust him with regard to their child. She had to.

Christian was not her father. And he hadn’t abandoned her. Right at that very moment he stood in the chapel waiting for her. Exactly as he’d said he would be.

The relief she’d felt late last night when he’d called to say he was back in Athens had been so powerful it scared her to remember the physicality of her reaction.

It was simply relief that he hadn’t humiliated her by standing her up, she insisted to herself. Nothing more than that. Nothing.

She checked her watch. It was time. In approximately one hour she would be married. Christian would be her husband.

She watched her reflected cheeks flush, her blood heating at the remembrances of their one night together, the night that had led to this very moment. Vivid memories of it played in her dreams every night, teasing her, haunting her.

People always said you couldn’t miss what you’d never had and in the sexual aspect of her life that had held true. Now that she had tried it…

But it wasn’t sex on its own that she wanted, that her body responded to. It was sex with Christian. Whether it was the alcohol loosening her inhibitions or something else undefined, he’d awoken her. He did things to her.

Before she’d put her wedding dress on, she’d stepped into her lacy white knickers, imagining him sliding them off; had put her lacy white bra on, imagining him unclasping it; had rolled the silk white stockings up her legs, imagining his strong fingers trailing over her skin as he slid them off.

Dio, how many times had she picked up her phone to call him before slamming it back down? Too many to count.

He’d called her a couple of times, though, conversations that had left her feeling all knotted yet incredibly warm inside. There was something about his voice that set tiny little bolts darting through her skin…

She hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that he was hiding something from her, though.

Per favore, not another woman.

Do. Not. Trust.

How she could she trust him? She didn’t know how.

She did know that she wanted to. She wanted to believe he would treat her with respect, that maybe one day…

A rap on her door jolted her out of the trance she’d worked herself into.

It was probably a member of staff, come to escort her to the chapel. The sweet girl who brought her breakfast every morning had been shocked when Alessandra had told her she would be walking to the chapel alone.

Always alone.

How she wished she’d swallowed her pride and called her brother and begged him to come. Deep inside, a part of her had believed he would come, that he wouldn’t leave her to do this alone. That he’d forgive her.

This was his flesh and blood growing in her belly, the very reason she and Christian were prepared to take this ultimate step.

Alone or not, she should have left already.

Her stomach clenched.

She gazed at the French doors.

She didn’t have to do this. She could step out onto her balcony, unfold the emergency stairs and escape. Everyone was at the chapel. The staff was busy organising all the celebrations. It could be ages before anyone realised she wasn’t being traditionally late.

She pictured Christian’s face when he realised she’d stood him up.

She couldn’t do that to him. Alessandra knew all about humiliation and would never intentionally inflict it on someone else, least of all him.

And what would their innocent baby say when, at some point in the future, he or she learned what their mother had done to their father?

Another rap on the door reminded her that someone stood on the other side waiting for her.

Hurrying over, she opened it, pulling a smile onto her face that dropped as soon as she saw who it was.

Dressed in a morning suit, stood her brother.

For a moment she didn’t say anything.

Then she burst into tears.

Christian stood with Zayed and Stefan at his side, his two best men—or, as they were called here in their shared role, his koumbaros—eyes fixed on the chapel door.

Where was she?

It was traditional for the bride to be late but half an hour? If Stefan hadn’t taken his phone from him after Christian had texted her to say he was at the chapel, he would have called and demanded to know where she was.

A face in the congregation caused him momentarily to lose track of his thoughts.

There in the third row sat Mikolaj, an enormous beam on his face. Beside him sat his wife, Tanya, and three of their seven children.

Alessandra must have invited them.

His stomach curled.

She’d done that for him.

Christian nodded a greeting to them but was unable to return the smiles.

Where was she?

The priest continued to smile reassurance but Christian could see the doubt now plaguing his jovial demeanour.

At least the chapel belonged to the hotel and thus was owned by him. They would wait.

Another ten minutes passed. Just as his guts were really starting to churn, the door swung open and there she appeared, the sunshine illuminating her in a golden glow that made the white of her dress sparkle.

It was like gazing at an angel, a moment so beautiful that the relief that should have overwhelmed him faded into nothing, leaving only wonder.

The sound of Pachelbel’s Canon in D began, played by the string quartet hired for the occasion.

Alessandra walked towards him, an ethereal smile on her face, her steps slow.

His eyes fixed solely on her, it took a good few beats before he registered the arm she held on to.

Rocco had come. He hadn’t abandoned his sister. Christian’s trip to New York had paid off.

Behind them walked Olivia, stunning in emerald green.

As the bridal party stepped closer to him, a lump formed in his throat that grew larger with every one of Alessandra’s steps until she was there before him.

Unlike most brides, who pinned their hair up into an elaborate creation, she’d left hers loose, tumbling around her shoulders in dark chestnut waves. She looked amazing. Her dress a work of art: thin lace-embellished straps with tiny diamonds curved down and across her cleavage like a heart, the sheer material wrapping around her waist to showcase the flare of her hips, then floating to the floor and resting in a white circle.

He looked for a sign of apprehension but none was there. Her beautiful honey-brown eyes, artfully made-up, were clear. Remarkably clear.

He reached out a hand, and as she took it he caught Rocco’s eye. The look he gave said: she’s all yours now. Hurt her and you will spend the rest of your life paying for it.

He’d never understood the full weight of what ‘giving the bride away’ meant until that moment.

From here on in, the role of her protector passed to him, an antiquated sentiment, but one he felt keenly.

Alessandra would never be his possession but for good or for ill they would be bound together.

The service was anticipated to last around an hour. For the congregation, it no doubt dragged. For Christian, time accelerated, the moment to exchanging their vows speeding up until it was time for them to make their promises to each other—not a requirement of the church but something they had agreed upon between themselves for the benefit of their guests.

He said his first, then Alessandra recited hers, her husky voice true and strong, her Greek practised and flawless. The look in her eyes, fixed on his, was full of meaning. It was a sight that made his chest feel as if a weight had been placed inside him, squeezing down.

There was no time to consider it as now was the time for what was, to many Greeks, the most important part of the ceremony: the crowning. The priest blessed the two floral-wreath crowns, then Zayed took the lead, passing the crowns back and forth over them three times before carefully placing them on their heads.

Finally they were done.

It was time to kiss the bride.

He searched again for her apprehension. It was still missing, a smile playing in the corner of her delicious lips. Lips he hadn’t felt upon his since the night they had conceived the child that grew in her belly. Lips he’d spent the past couple of months dreaming of.

Swallowing away the lump in his throat, he placed a hand to her still-slender hip and leaned down. Her small hand reached up to rest on his lapel.

He closed his eyes and pressed his lips to hers, just the breath of a kiss, but enough for the softest mouth he’d ever known to reawaken more memories of their night together and make his pulses race.

When the kiss ended, the congregation, no doubt led by Mikolaj, burst into applause. Alessandra grinned, her whole face smiling, her happiness transparent. She placed a hand on his shoulder and straightened to whisper into his ear, ‘Thank you.’

He knew without her having to explain that she was talking about Rocco.

‘Thank you,’ he whispered back.

She’d brought Mikolaj to their wedding. Christian hadn’t thought he wanted him there, thought he hadn’t wanted any associations with his past. He hadn’t appreciated how much it would mean. He’d thought having Stefan and Zayed there would be enough but, no matter how close they all were, Mikolaj had been there his entire life. He was family. Knowing he and Tanya were there to witness it all warmed him right down to his toes.

A sharp pang of regret rent him that his mother wasn’t there to witness this day too. But, unlike Mikolaj, his mother would have taken no joy from it. The opposite, in fact.

One look at Mikolaj’s beaming, proud face showed how much being there meant to him.

Alessandra had done that for him. Before he could consider what that actually meant, she kissed him, a kiss containing more than a hint of promise. That promise was reflected in her sparkling eyes.

The coldness that had remained within him since their visit to his mother suddenly lifted, pushed out by the desire this beautiful woman—his bride—elicited in him.

For a moment he was tempted to say, to hell with the reception, and whisk her straight off to his suite.

A knowing look played on her beautiful features, a look that said just a few more hours and I will be yours.

And she would be—his. Every inch of her.

A short time later they left the chapel, officially husband and wife.

Most of the non-Greek guests had brought confetti to throw over them, but Mikolaj and Tanya had come prepared, handing out paper cups full of rice to throw, as was the proper tradition in Greece.

Amidst howls of laughter, thousands of hard grains were chucked over them from every possible angle. Zayed and Stefan got hold of him and tipped a cupful down the back of his morning suit, rubbing them into his back for extra effect.

The official photos were taken in the grounds before the chapel, and then the entire wedding party headed back to the hotel for the proper celebrations to begin.

The terraced roof of the hotel had been transformed. An abundance of balloons and beautiful flowers covered the entire perimeter, the Parthenon clear in the distance, but close enough that from certain aspects it felt as if you could reach out and touch it.

The day had turned into something magical.

All Alessandra could think was how much work and effort Christian had put into making this a special day for them. Sure, he’d outsourced it all, but he’d been the one to do the outsourcing.

All she’d done was buy her dress. And lingerie…

Crying in her brother’s arms had had the effect of clearing her head.

Rocco had urged her to abandon the whole thing. He and Olivia would take care of her.

Alessandra didn’t need taking care of—her baby did. Christian was her baby’s father. They belonged in each other’s lives.

She’d washed her face and reapplied her make-up and then, when she’d looked back in the mirror, the truth had been reflected back at her in startling clarity.

She was committing her life to Christian and their baby. It was time to embrace it for all their sakes.

Done with taking pictures of her husband and their guests—it truly was a photographer’s dream here—she put her camera back into its case and sat back down at the top table.

Staring at him now—holding court with Zayed, Stefan and Stefan’s date, Clio, on the edge of the dance floor—her heart clenched, packing into a tight little ball.

Christian must have felt her gaze upon him for he met her eyes, raising his glass of champagne to her.

She raised her lemonade back, her skin dancing as if his gaze had physically touched her.

He said something to his friends which made them all laugh. It pained her that Rocco refused to join them, keeping his distance in the far corner of the room with Olivia and an earnest A-list Hollywood superstar. Her brother had spelled out in no uncertain terms that he was there to do his duty and nothing else.

Her suspicions about Christian’s trip to New York had been correct—he had gone there with an ulterior motive. But her fears had been wildly off the mark. He hadn’t gone to meet up with a secret woman. He’d gone in an attempt to make her brother see sense and attend their wedding.

He’d turned up at their New York home and told her brother in no uncertain terms that Alessandra needed him. When he’d left, Olivia had taken up the cause, essentially bullying Rocco into attending.

Knowing Christian had done that for her…è stato incredibile.

She only wished Rocco would see what an amazing thing it was too. To her knowledge, he hadn’t exchanged a word with Christian all day.

Whatever his reasons, and however great his reluctance, she was glad he’d come. More than glad. She hoped with all her heart that one day he would come to accept them and accept that their marriage was the right thing for all of them. He might infuriate her but he was her brother and she loved him.

Christian weaved his way through the dancing guests and took his seat at the top table beside her. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, leaning back into his chair.

‘Perfetto.’ She smiled. ‘This has all been amazing, grazie mille.’

He slung an arm around the back of her chair. ‘It is my pleasure.’

The sound of rotor blades in full motion caught their attention.

‘Paparazzi,’ he spat, getting back to his feet and kicking his chair back. Immediately he pulled his phone from his pocket and dialled a number, speaking into it with a low voice packed full of menace.

‘I had arranged that no helicopter fly within a mile of the hotel today,’ he explained tightly when he finished his call, his face taut. ‘I will not have our wedding day turned into a circus.’

She shrugged. ‘They’re tenacious. It was to be expected.’

‘They’re like locusts.’ He laid his palms on the table, his face stark with anger.

Not wanting all the good feeling ruined, she raised a hand to his face and palmed his cheek. ‘Thank you.’

The blue in his eyes darkened, his frame stilling. ‘For what?’

‘For trying to keep them away from me.’

His nostrils flared a touch. He didn’t answer, simply stared at her as if trying to peer into her mind.

She gazed back, drinking him in, the heat inside her—so constant when with him—bubbling beneath her…

And then he dipped his head and covered her mouth with his, holding it there, not moving, just breathing into her, warm champagne-scented air filling her senses until he gently slid his mouth across her cheek and brushed his lips against her ear. ‘Soon, agapi mou, I will do more than just kiss you.’

Her insides melted. Her heart racing at a gallop, she was about to grab his hand and beg him to whisk her away to somewhere private when Zayed joined them, announcing his presence by slapping Christian hard on the back.

‘Come on, newlyweds, it is time for the Kalamatianos,’ he said, referring to the traditional wedding dance adored by all Greeks. Over his shoulder, Mikolaj and Tanya grinned and waved, already tapping their feet in anticipation.

She was so glad she’d gone behind his back and invited them. It hadn’t sat well with her, knowing he would have no one from his childhood there. Knowing Christian was happy she had done so lightened her further.

It made her feel all warm and fuzzy inside, thinking they had gone behind each other’s back to bring someone important to their big day.

Soon she was on her feet with Christian in the centre of the dance floor, each holding an end of a scarf that had been thrust at them. With traditional Greek music playing, Zayed and Stefan chivvied everyone up to form a circle around them, the guests linking hands and, following Mikolaj and the other Greek guests’ example, swirling around them like a circling snake, shouts of, ‘Opa!’ ringing out.

Alessandra had the time of her life. When the Kalamatianos was over, everyone, including the bride and groom, stayed on the dance floor. They danced together, slow songs, fast songs, their hands entwined, their eyes only for each other.

She wanted the wedding and all the good feelings it evoked in her to last forever, to hold on to this moment for as long as she could. Contrarily, she wanted it to end now, wanted the sensuous promise ringing from Christian’s eyes to become reality.

Soon…

Soon it would be time to retire to his suite and begin their newly married life in a manner that sent heat surging through her just to think about it.

Christian opened the door of the suite and, keeping hold of Alessandra’s hand, closed it behind them.

‘Someone’s been busy,’ he observed, burrowing his face into the nape of her neck. At long last, he was free to touch her and taste her and do all the things he’d wanted to do for so long the ache in his groin had become a permanent part of him.

His suite—their suite, now all of Alessandra’s possessions had been moved in while their celebrations had been going on—had been decorated. Flowers were artfully arranged in vases, rose petals had been scattered over the bed and a bottle of champagne sat in an ice bucket next to two champagne flutes.

‘Clichéd but very romantic,’ she said, twisting round to face him.

All the dancing had left her cheeks flushed and her eyes alive with pleasure.

He wanted those eyes glowing with pleasure for a different reason.

Gripping her hip, he pulled her to him and snaked his arm around her waist.

He gazed down into those striking eyes and those moreish lips. His to taste.

She was his to taste.

As he bent his head to claim her mouth, she darted gracefully out of his clasp, laughing softly. ‘Not yet.’

‘You’re making me wait?’ he said, his words coming out with an animalistic growl.

‘I’m going to freshen up. Remember, anticipation makes fulfilment taste all the sweeter.’ She sashayed to one of the bathrooms, flashed him a smile full of promise and locked the door behind her.

Alessandra applied a touch more lipstick then tightened the sash of her silk white robe.

Who needed alcohol?

Desire pulsed through her, making her pulses race uncontrollably.

She hadn’t expected that a ring on her finger and a signed piece of paper could make her feel so different but it did.

Christian was the only man she’d ever truly wanted.

She remembered the first time she’d met him, when she’d been twelve and Rocco had brought the Brat Pack to Lake Como for a break. How young and naïve she’d been, still believing in love and romance. She’d taken one look at Adonis and her heart had skipped into her mouth.

He’d hardly noticed her existence.

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight on her ill-fated tryst with Javier, she could see it was the flattery she’d responded to, not him. She’d swallowed all his lies because she’d been flattered a man, not an immature boy, was showing an interest in her.

With Christian, it was the man himself she responded to.

She dabbed some perfume behind her ear and onto her wrists and left the privacy of the bathroom. It was time to see her husband as his wife.

CHAPTER TEN

WHEN ALESSANDRA EMERGED from the bathroom and closed the door softly behind her, the only sound Christian could hear was his own heartbeat. Drumming. Thundering in his ears.

He’d stripped naked, shedding his clothes in front of the mirror, staring closely at his reflection.

He didn’t know what it could be but he felt different.

He looked the same. The desire he felt for his beautiful bride still burned deep inside him.

But something had changed.

Now he sat in the huge bed, leant back against the headboard, the bed sheets draped across his lap, a dim light glowing. And she was here with him, her dress removed, only a white robe covering her beautiful figure.

Slowly she stepped to him until she reached his side.

‘Take your robe off.’ He could hear the thickness in the timbre of his voice.

Her hands trembled, but a knowing smile pulled at her lips. She tugged at the sash of her robe and parted it, letting it drop to the floor.

Christian couldn’t have torn his gaze away if he’d wanted to.

He didn’t want to.

He wanted to capture this moment so he could replay it forever.

Theos but she was more beautiful than he remembered, the white of her lacy lingerie contrasting against the golden hue of her skin.

Her breasts were swollen, the bra pushing them up to display her cleavage, only just hiding the dusky nipples he remembered so well.

Sitting upright, he extended a hand to grip onto her curved hip, sliding a finger under the strap of her suspender belt.

He ran his other hand up the soft swell of her belly, only slightly thickened since he’d last seen her unclothed.

She dropped a hand onto his shoulder, a cloud of her sultry scent releasing and filling his senses. He’d never known a scent like it, so perfectly matching its owner, a sweet yet musky fragrance, with depth.

He traced his hand back down her belly and clasped hold of her other hip, tugging her to him.

Inhaling her scent deeply into his lungs, he pressed a kiss into the curve of her neck, felt her quiver.

The ache in his groin, that constant state of affairs whenever he was with her, magnified by a thousand, his entire body coming alive to her sweet touch and even sweeter taste.

Using gentle manipulation, he pulled her onto the bed facing him, so she straddled his still-covered lap.

Her eyes darkened and swirled, arousal and desire burning strongly.

The first time they’d made love he’d plunged into her without a thought. His shock at discovering she was a virgin had been masked by concern that he’d hurt her. Her breath had hitched, a tiny mew escaping her throat. He’d held her tightly, stroking her hair, her body, raining kisses over her face until he’d felt her relax, seen her pupils dilate…

She’d been so responsive to everything he’d done to her, so eager to give in return.

She’d been a revelation.

And now he got to experience and taste her all over again.

But this time there would be no pain. Only pleasure.

Wrapping an arm around her and cradling the back of her head with his other hand, he pulled her flush against him and slanted his mouth over the soft, plump lips he’d spent the past two months dreaming about.

She sighed into him and rested her hands on his shoulders, her nails digging into him as her lips parted to allow his tongue to sweep into her warmth.

He stroked her back, up and down, exploring the silky skin anew, then down her sides to the top of her stockings.

She broke the kiss, nuzzling her mouth against his jaw and down into his neck, her hair tickling him.

‘You taste divine,’ she murmured, the first words she’d uttered since she’d left the bathroom.

Her compliment made his chest heave.

He speared her hair and tugged it back gently so he could look into her eyes. ‘You are divine.’

A small, almost shy, smile spread across her face, and she leaned forward to kiss him, deeply, passionately, her hands crawling up to his scalp and holding on to it.

He found the clasp of her bra and undid it. She released her hold on him, enabling him to pull the straps down her arms and discard the bra on the floor beside him.

When they’d made love the first time, he’d been enraptured with her breasts, their size, their taste, the way his hands could cup them perfectly, everything about them. Pregnancy had swollen them. He didn’t know if it was a trick of the light but her dusky nipples seemed darker than he remembered, contrasting against the paleness of her breasts.

He was the only person in the world who knew Alessandra’s breasts were the palest part of her body.

It was because his child was growing inside her that these small, subtle changes were taking place.

Using his hands to lift her a touch, he dipped his head and captured one of those beautiful, dusky nipples in his mouth.

Alessandra moaned and ran her fingers through his hair, arching her back to thrust her chest forward and into him.

He flattened a palm against the small of her back to steady her, his free hand roaming until he found the clasp of her suspenders. Before he released it he stroked the exposed flesh above the stockings. Her skin felt better than any material ever could.

When he played with the clasp he was shocked to find himself all thumbs, the deftness he’d acquired over the years gone. It was as if he’d never tried to undo a suspender belt before.

Spearing her hair again, he kissed her, filling his senses with her sultry, sweet taste, driving all thoughts from his mind.

Frustrated at the suspender belt, he tugged at a stocking and felt the material rip in his fingers. He grabbed the material of the other and did the same, then clasped her bottom and leaned forward, using his strength to lay her flat on her back. The movement caused the bed sheet to fall from his lap, freeing his erection which brushed against her thigh, sending deep pulsations firing through his blood, his loins, everywhere.

He sat back to gaze at her, noting everything, from her short, shallow breaths to the jutting of her erect nipples.

Unable to resist, he kissed her again, hard. Alessandra’s arms looped around his neck, her legs lifting to hook around him, clasping him to her.

‘Not yet,’ he murmured, kneeling upright.

She pouted and raised herself onto her elbows. Her breaths came in shallow pants.

‘Soon,’ he promised, leaning forward to kiss her neck and push her flat again.

A sound like a purr came from her as he kissed his way down her chest and belly and slipped a hand round her back to undo the clasp at the back of her suspender belt. Discarding it, he flattened a hand over her thigh and caught the top of the ripped stocking. Slowly, he pulled it down, past her knee, over her calf and down to the delicate ankle.

‘I’ve dreamed of you doing that,’ she said, her husky voice almost breathless.

She’d dreamt of him…?

In response, he leaned down to press a kiss to her now bare foot, then followed the trail he’d just made with his hands with his tongue, darting licks and kisses all the way up to her inner thigh and up to the very heart of her. Pressing his mouth onto her knickers, he inhaled deeply, the scent of her heat almost making him dizzy with desire.

Checking himself, he gritted his teeth before gripping hold of her remaining stocking and slowly sliding it off.

Now she was naked save for her lacy knickers. He took a moment to stare at her, taking every inch of her in.

She was perfect.

She was his.

The look on her face was something to be savoured, a knowing yet shy quirk of the lips.

She levered herself up until she knelt before him, face to face.

‘My turn,’ she whispered, her eyes sparkling.

For such a slight woman she had a hidden strength, able, with a push of her hand, to shove him onto his back.

She laughed softly, taking hold of his wrists and pulling them up and over his head.

This had to count as the single most erotic moment of his life: Alessa straddling him, pinning him down, her swollen breasts brushing against his face. Every time he made to capture one in his mouth, she would move just out of reach.

Her teasing was deliberate, as was the way she straddled him, positioning herself on his erection. Every time she moved out of the reach of his mouth her crotch rubbed the length of his erection, the material of her knickers preventing any penetration.

She leaned down to kiss him on the mouth, still holding his wrists.

With a simple flick he could be free from her clasp.

Instead, he kissed her back, succumbing to the delights she wanted to bestow on him.

Her soft mouth pressed along his jaw then she released her hold on his wrists and slowly made her descent. No part of his chest was left unkissed or unstroked, his skin alive under the trail she made.

When she reached his groin she completely ignored his erection, her mouth working around it, her hands cupping his balls while her tongue darted out to taste them.

Her movements were clumsy, a sign of her inexperience, but this only added to the eroticism of the moment.

This was all for him.

Her tongue flickered onto the base of his shaft.

A powerful bolt shot through him, a groan escaping his lips.

He gripped the bed sheets in his fists and clenched his teeth even tighter, finding a spot on the ceiling to focus on.

For a moment he’d been certain he was going to come.

‘Is something wrong?’ she asked, stopping what she was doing to look at him, her eyes clouding with doubt.

Speech wouldn’t form. He shook his head and sat up, leaning forward to clasp her cheeks and pull her into another kiss. In a tangle of arms and legs they collapsed together, Alessandra beneath him, devouring each other with their mouths.

He tugged at her knickers, pushing them down her hips, using his thighs and legs to pull them down. When they reached her ankles she kicked them off then wrapped her legs around him, raising her bottom so her heat rubbed against his erection.

And then he was inside her, burrowed in her tight heat, the relief giddying.

The first time they’d made love he’d been blown away with how deeply he’d felt everything, every touch, every movement magnified.

This was something else completely.

Slowing their kisses, he began to move, keeping his groin ground to hers.

Her soft moans fired him, her kisses fuelled him, her roaming hands and fingers burning through his skin.

He opened his eyes to find her gazing at him in a dazed wonder.

Reaching for her hand, he brought it up to rest by the side of her head and clasped it tightly, kissing her with renewed passion as his thrusts deepened. It was as if he’d fused into one with her.

He felt rather than heard her come. Her grip around his erection thickened and tightened, her lips freezing on his, her only sound a tiny, almost breathless mew.

He was hardly aware of his own release. His senses were too full of Alessandra, watching every last moment of her climax.

Finally spent, he burrowed his face into her neck, careful not to put too much weight on her belly, and savoured the most delicious warmth he’d ever known spread through him.

The heavy weight of sleep soon came to claim him, and he shifted his weight off her. She followed his movements and settled into the crook of his arm with a contented sigh.

He awoke a few hours later. The suite was in darkness, a sliver of moonlight shining through.

Alessandra was draped over him, breathing deeply, her hair tickling his neck and chin. He smoothed it down, marvelling at its silkiness.

He tried to doze but sleep refused to return.

How could he sleep with so much racing through his mind? When there were so many emotions racing through his chest, it was a struggle to catch his breath.

The first time he’d slept with her, in her apartment in Milan… He’d struggled for thoughts and breath then too.

This was much worse.

He’d felt her getting too close in Mikolaj’s restaurant, that feeling she could see through the veneer of his skin and through to the heart of him. That feeling had been compounded after the visit to his mother’s house. He’d retreated to New York partly to talk sense into Rocco but mostly for space to compose himself in preparation for his new life.

Marriage wouldn’t change anything, he’d convinced himself. He would compartmentalise Alessandra’s presence in his life just as he did with his mother. They would live together but they wouldn’t be together.

Making love to her again… Something had come alive inside him. He’d felt it uncoiling when they’d exchanged their vows but with everything going on that day had put it to one side. Now it, whatever it was, had uncoiled and bitten him, hard enough that it felt like a physical pain.

Before he could hope to decipher it, she roused in his arms, pulling herself up enough to kiss him, deeply, passionately, awakening in an instant.

He responded as if he’d been lying there waiting for her to wake, groaning when she slid onto his already hard length.

Doing nothing but hold on to her waist to support her, he let her take the lead. The moonlight bathed her, letting him watch as she took her pleasure, watch the lips that parted, the eyes that glazed. Her soft moans deepened until she ground herself onto him. He felt her release as deeply as he felt his own, revelled in the pulsations that seemed to draw his own orgasm into unquantifiable realms.

Afterwards, when he thought she was falling back into slumber, she pressed a kiss to his chest.

‘I could get used to this,’ she said, her voice sleepy but tinged with a smile.

And tinged with something that sounded like hope.

His eyes opened with a jerk.

He remembered the look in her eyes when they’d exchanged their vows. Now he knew what it had been: hope.

Alessandra had hopes for their future as a married couple.

She was changing towards him—she had changed towards him.

And with that change came the realisation that he could forget sharing a bed with her when they both wanted it.

Unless he kept a proper distance from her, he would soon have the power to hurt her.

Carefully he disentangled himself from her arms and got out of bed.

‘Where are you going?’ she mumbled.

‘To get a drink. Go to sleep. I’ll be back in a minute.’ But he knew his words were a lie even as he spoke them.

He needed to protect her.

He needed to protect her from himself.

Alessandra slipped into her robe and headed to the bathroom where she could hear the shower running.

Her skin flushed to think of joining Christian in there, lathering his gorgeous body…

She stretched for the third time, shaking the lingering sleepiness off, and turned the door handle. It was locked.

She tried the handle again and still the door didn’t budge.

She didn’t know why—what experience did she have of men in a sensual sense?—but it surprised her that he might want his privacy whilst he showered. After the things they’d done to each other…

The flush on her skin deepened, penetrating through her flesh and down low, erotic memories of what they had done together, making her glow from the inside out.

It had been even better than she remembered. The alcohol during their first time might have been enough to loosen her inhibitions but it must have dulled her senses a fraction too.

Or maybe it was because this time there was something real between them that surpassed mere lust.

All Alessandra knew was that she wanted nothing more than to spend the day in bed with him. The only thing to spoil her memories was awakening to find his side of the bed empty.

Instead of waiting for him, she dived into the adjoining bathroom and deliberately kept the door ajar, an open invitation for him to join her.

After a good few minutes of soaping herself under the powerful walk-in shower and washing her hair, boredom kicked in.

She dried herself quickly, rubbed the towel over her hair and moisturised her face.

She made to leave the bathroom, pausing at the last moment to put her robe back on, not yet confident enough to walk around stark naked in broad daylight.

The door of the bathroom he’d been using was open. Masculine scents mingled with the steam of the shower, filling the empty bedroom.

Maybe he was ordering breakfast for them.

She wandered through to the main living area of the suite and found him at the dining table—fully dressed and working on his laptop.

He looked up and flashed a quick smile. ‘Good morning.’

She nodded slowly, caught off-guard to find him working. For surely he must be working? He hadn’t even donned casual clothes but wore a white shirt and blue pinstriped trousers.

‘Are you planning on wearing that to Marrakech?’ she asked. They were due to fly there later that afternoon for a four-day honeymoon.

An uncomfortable look spread over his face, quickly gone, but there long enough for her chest to sink down to her feet.

‘I’m afraid we will have to take our honeymoon another time,’ he said calmly, looking back at his laptop. ‘An emergency has come up.’

‘Another one?’

He threw her a smile that was clearly intended to bestow patience when all it did was make her want to throw something at him.

‘You know my job is all about finance. When financial problems hit companies, prompt action is needed.’

‘I appreciate that. What I don’t get is why it has to be you—why can’t someone else step in and act as saviour?’

‘There is no one else.’

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘What about our honeymoon and the way it’s supposed to convince the world we’re in love?’ Why did her heart clench to say that?

‘I joined the board of an Athens shipping company last month in an advisory capacity. One of my staff has been going through the accounts and has discovered a large hole in the company’s finances. Unless we plug that hole in the next two days, fifty thousand people will not receive their pay cheques. That’s fifty thousand people who will struggle to pay their bills, their mortgages, feed their children. We will go to Marrakech at a later date.’

How could she argue with that? She couldn’t, not unless she wanted to sound like the most selfish person in the world.

She eyed him coolly, trying to decide if the whiff of duplicity she detected was real or the workings of a tired, disappointed mind. Four days in Marrakech with nothing to do but laze under the sun and make love had sounded like heaven.

She didn’t dispute the crisis he’d described was real. What she did dispute was his assertion that he was the only person in the world able to resolve it.

Throwing a tight smile, determined not to show her disappointment, she said, ‘Seeing as you’re going to be busy, I’ll return to Milan. There’s a lot of stuff there I need to be getting on with.’

‘No, you will stay here in Athens with me.’

‘Are you giving me an order?’

He sighed. ‘If you return to Milan on your own, the day after our wedding, suspicions will be aroused. People will understand the postponement of a honeymoon because of a financial crisis. This is Greece; the whole country’s in crisis. They will not understand a new wife who is not at her husband’s side during it. We need to live together full-time as man and wife for a few months to keep the doubters at bay. We already agreed this.’

Alessandra’s teeth were clenched so tightly against the metaphorical kicking they’d just received that she had to fight to prise them apart.

Suspicions would be aroused?

That was one way to bring her back down to earth.

While she fought the despondency crashing through her like a wave, she fought even harder to keep her composure.

This was a timely reminder that theirs was not a real marriage. The romance of their wedding day— what Christian had done to get her brother there, the wondrousness of their love-making—all must have combined to set off some new hormones within her that made her look at Christian in a fuzzy light.

Dio, she must have been cast under a spell.

She blinked rapidly to clear the fuzzy light, wishing she could clear the churning in her belly with the same ease.

‘Okay, I’ll stay in Athens with you, but remember I’ve a shoot scheduled for next Thursday so we need to be back in Milan for that.’

He bowed his head. ‘I’m sure that won’t be a problem.’

‘Good.’ She didn’t add that should a ‘problem’ occur she would fly to Milan and do her work regardless. ‘I’m going to order some breakfast. Do you want anything?’

‘Just a pot of coffee, thank you.’

Christian watched her pick up the suite phone and place their order then turned his attention back to the screen in front of him.

His eyes wouldn’t focus.

After the incredible night they’d shared he’d been expecting much greater resistance from Alessandra about the postponed honeymoon, had braced himself for the worst.

If he hadn’t seen the flare of despondency in her eyes he would believe her understanding and calmness at the situation was genuine.

As much as it hurt him to hurt her, he knew it was for the best.

He had to put their marriage on the footing they had originally agreed.

There were women who could separate love and sex. He no longer believed Alessandra to be one of them.

The hope he’d seen in her eyes as they’d exchanged their vows and then the hope he’d heard in her voice after they’d made love…

What did he, the gutter rat from Athens, know about love?

All he knew about it was that it broke hearts and destroyed people. It had destroyed his mother and Alessandra’s father.

He wouldn’t know how to love or show love if he tried. All he knew was how to make money. A woman like Alessandra deserved so much more.

Physical distance wasn’t enough. He needed to put emotional distance between them too. Now. Before he hurt her.

If he allowed their sexual relationship to develop, her feelings would likely develop too while his…

He’d never had a proper relationship before. Never. He had no idea how long it would take for boredom to set in, when the thrill of making love to the one woman would abate and he’d be looking for a new challenge.

If her feelings grew stronger whilst his decreased, the pain it would cause her would be immense.

He had to nip it in the bud now. For both their sakes.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHRISTIAN’S HOME WAS a pebblestone villa in a private enclave of Athens, set away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Surrounded by acres of green land, the villa itself was found by means of a private driveway; indeed, the one word that sprang to Alessandra’s mind as she got out of the car was private. They could be anywhere. They could be nowhere.

The villa was beautiful, there was no denying that— picture perfect—but the silence was deafening. Villa Mondelli had been much the same, the majority of her childhood spent in its splendid isolation. She’d adored the infrequent trips to Milan Rocco would take her on when he was home from university—loved the noise, the smells and the bustle of the big city, that feeling of being a small cog in a big wheel where all the tiny component parts jostled together nicely to make the big picture.

They’d left the hotel after breakfast, waved off by their remaining guests. She’d forced a bright smile, forced jollity.

On the drive to his home he’d explained in more detail what he was working on. She’d tried hard to be sympathetic and understanding about the importance that the situation be speedily resolved. That did nothing to prevent the underlying resentment.

She was used to workaholics. She’d been raised by the various nannies her workaholic grandfather had employed for her. Her brother was of an identical mould.

But she was one hundred per cent certain that, if such a situation had occurred hours before Rocco’s honeymoon, he would have put Olivia first. At the very least he would have discussed the matter with her and taken her input before making a decision.

The big difference was that Rocco loved Olivia. She was his world.

All Alessandra was to Christian was the vessel carrying his child, married to secure his heir and avert a scandal. Love did not and never would feature in it, no matter what foolish feelings had been stoked on her wedding day.

Against her better judgement she’d allowed hope to rear its head.

Sex was a dangerous game to play. It evoked feelings that had no business being conjured.

In future she would make love with her body and detach her mind. Somehow. She was certain it could be done. Lots of other women were able to do it so why should she be any different?

The vows she’d made had been given honestly but for the sake of the little life growing in her belly, not for herself.

It would be wise for her to remember that and stop letting her hormones off the leash.

Christian followed her out of the car and walked her to the large front door, the driver tasked with bringing her luggage in.

A woman who Alessandra judged to be in her mid-forties opened the door to greet them. Christian introduced her as Evanthia, his head of housekeeping.

Evanthia took Alessandra’s extended hand, uttered a friendly greeting in Greek then stood back so they could enter.

The interior was every bit what the average person would expect a bachelor billionaire’s home to look like: lavish. Ostentatious. Cold. All vaulted ceilings, white walls and lots of marble.

The reception area where they stood led through to an enormous open-plan living space. While she stood at the threshold, craning her neck to take it all in, Christian and Evanthia had a quick conversation.

‘I need to go,’ he said to Alessandra a few moments later. ‘Evanthia will show you around and show you where your room is.’

‘Where my room is?’ she interrupted, snapped out of her musings about his interior decoration.

He nodded. ‘If you’re not happy with it then let Evanthia know and she can move you to a different one.’

‘Oh.’

He looked at her with calm eyes. ‘Is there a problem?’

She forced her own eyes to be bright and wide. ‘Not at all.’

‘Then make yourself comfortable—this is your home now. It is doubtful I will be back before the evening but you have my number if you need me for anything.’

With that he left, leaving Alessandra feeling as if a rug had been pulled out from under her.

They were to have separate rooms.

That meant they would be sleeping in separate beds.

Her reality check that morning when he’d cancelled their short honeymoon hadn’t been a reality check enough.

The talking-to about having sex with her body and not her heart now sounded presumptuous and silly, even if she’d only been talking to herself.

Silly, silly Alessandra. When would she learn?

She placed a hand to her stomach, refusing to let the swell of hopelessness pull her down.

Evanthia said something in Greek, beckoning for Alessandra to follow her.

Time to pull herself together.

All her love would be reserved for her baby.

With many gestures, Evanthia gave her the tour: the huge living area with its ‘hidden’ library, a bar nestled in a cut-out section of wall and a dining area with a table that could fit two dozen comfortably. She was also shown the enormous kitchen, the indoor swimming pool and the gymnasium that would put any private member’s club to shame. Through a back door she was shown two outdoor swimming pools and a lawn tennis court, then it was time to head upstairs. They climbed one of three sets of winding stairs and walked along a landing that overlooked the living area, a four-foot-high length of impossibly clear Perspex barrier there to stop anyone plunging headfirst to the first floor.

Her room was at the far end of the landing. Her luggage had been placed inside.

‘Clothes,’ Evanthia said, pointing at an internal door. Alessandra opened the door to find a dressing room.

‘I do?’ Evanthia asked, picking one of the suitcases up.

‘I can do it,’ Alessandra answered with a smile. ‘Thank you for the offer.’

Evanthia started talking, gesturing wildly.

Not having the faintest idea what the housekeeper was saying or what her gestures meant, Alessandra smiled and nodded politely. Eventually Evanthia bustled off after making gestures Alessandra thought might have indicated food.

As soon as she was alone in her room she set about unpacking, hanging her clothes in the empty dressing room.

A dressing room that would only ever contain feminine clothes.

Silly little Alessandra, she thought, folding into drawers the new underwear she’d brought expecting her husband to remove them.

She could wear bloomers and he would neither know nor care.

At some point in the preceding weeks she’d allowed herself to believe their marriage could be like a small nursery garden that, with some care and attention, might—just might—bloom into something substantial. Something real.

She’d even allowed herself to believe that Christian could be someone in whom she could trust, not only with her baby but with her.

Christian had taken all those little seedlings and ripped them up, a reminder that he’d never wanted the garden in the first place. He’d put her subtly but firmly in her place.

So why had he made love to her on their wedding night? Out of duty? To consummate it and make it legal?

No. He must have made love to her because she was there and he could. She could have been any woman in that bed.

It was her own lack of sexual experience that had failed to recognise it for what it was.

Did he expect them to sleep together again or was that it?

Her cheeks burned just imagining asking that question. The humiliation of his answer would be too much.

But it hurt so much to know that an experience she’d found so special and fulfilling had been all one-sided. Christian had been going through the motions, his tenderness part of those motions.

He probably had sex with all his lovers in the same way. Why did she think she was so special that Casanova Markos would want to share a bed with her more than once? She’d shared two nights with him; she should feel special. She’d had a one hundred per cent higher success rate than his other women.

She rubbed her itchy eyes and chided herself. Christian wasn’t doing anything they hadn’t previously agreed. She had to accept things as they were, not as she now wished they could be.

Their marriage would be like the green land surrounding the villa. Flat and one-dimensional and not a single different colour in sight.

Alessandra hovered the photo over the place on screen until she was happy with the position then clicked to release it. She stared for an age, trying to think of a witty caption to go with it. Inspiration struck. She typed it in, clicking the save button at the exact moment Christian stepped into the hidden library.

She’d heard movements, had assumed it was members of the household staff.

She hadn’t for a minute thought it was her husband actually returning home at what would be regarded by a normal person as a decent time.

How she wished her pulses didn’t race at the mere sight of him.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked, leaning against the oak desk she’d appropriated for her purpose.

‘A wedding montage.’ She made sure to keep her tone neutral. ‘I’m making what is basically an electronic magazine with pictures of all the people who were there to share our happy day.’ How she stopped her tongue curdling over ‘happy day’ she didn’t know. ‘When it’s done I’ll email it to all of them as a keepsake.’ She would also print and frame a copy and hang it beside her bed where it could be a daily reminder that her life with Christian was a sham, a marriage for appearances.

It felt good to have something to occupy her. Since their wedding three weeks ago, they’d travelled to Milan together for a few days so she could do her prearranged shoot and meet her obstetrician, flown on to Hong Kong where they’d stayed in his penthouse apartment—in separate rooms—for a week then travelled to London for a day’s shoot. They’d been back in Athens ever since.

Having no work to occupy her here, she’d spent a day sightseeing, undetected by any paparazzi. Far from being able to enthuse about all the ancient relics at the Acropolis, she’d felt lonely surrounded by couples and groups of people all chattering happily together.

Christian’s home was so remote and her grasp of the Greek language so weak that the chances of making any friendships were almost impossible. At least his apartment in Hong Kong was central, allowing her plenty of freedom to explore and occupy herself.

Being in Athens reminded her too strongly of being back at Villa Mondelli, when her grandfather had always been too busy working to take any notice of her. Rocco had been of the same mould. She’d learned as a child that moping about didn’t change anything. Keeping busy was the solution to curbing isolation. As a child she would bury her head in books, draw pictures and practise her gymnastics. She’d needed something, a project here in Athens, to keep the isolation at bay and it had been while going through the photos she’d taken on their wedding day, trying hard to look at them objectively and not through maudlin eyes, that inspiration had struck.

‘May I look?’

‘It isn’t finished yet—I’m about two-thirds done, but help yourself.’ She pushed her chair back to give him access to her laptop. She didn’t push back far enough, catching that gorgeous oaky scent that made her mouth water.

She closed her eyes in a futile attempt to curb the longing sweeping through her at his proximity.

In three weeks he hadn’t once attempted to seduce her, not even with his eyes, as he had done so many times before they’d made their vows.

One night had been enough for him to bore of her sexually. Okay; two nights. But they’d been months apart.

If only she could get her body to believe it was bored of him too.

Time would curb it, she told herself. Eventually his lack of interest would creep through her like a pollutant and she would be able to stop tossing and turning throughout the night, wishing he would come to her.

After three weeks of no physical attention she accepted that wasn’t going to happen.

It had done nothing to cure her longing.

‘This is incredible,’ Christian said, clicking his way through the pages she’d created. ‘The glossy magazines would pay you a fortune to get hold of your memory stick.’

‘I’m sure they would,’ she agreed drily.

Silently she congratulated herself on another coherent conversation with him.

It would have been easy to slip into self-pity after his rejection.

She would not do that. She would not infect her baby with negativity.

In fairness, he hadn’t lied to her. On the contrary, their marriage was shaping up to be exactly how they’d devised when they’d first agreed to it.

She only wished she’d known how heartsick it would make her.

Pushing her chair farther back, she got to her feet. ‘Are we still going out tonight?’ She refused to make assumptions. He might have only popped home for a fleeting visit between appointments.

Christian worked ridiculous hours. Even in Milan, where they’d stayed so she could work, he’d holed himself up in the spare room of her apartment, which he’d turned into a bedroom-cum-office, working until the early hours and joining her for an evening meal before disappearing again.

‘Yes. We don’t need to leave until eight. There’s plenty of time.’

They were going to a party at the British Embassy, their first official function as man and wife.

She looked at her watch. ‘I suppose two hours is adequate time to get ready for a night out.’

‘You suppose?’ he echoed with a droll tone.

Christian put his cufflinks on then slipped into his tuxedo jacket and straightened his black bowtie. He would do.

He headed downstairs and poured himself a small shot of bourbon.

It had been a hard few weeks and now he was looking forward to an evening out. Yes, it would be a networking evening, but with Alessandra by his side it would be bearable.

It was strange to think of himself merely enjoying a woman’s company for company’s sake but with Alessandra he did. Until their impromptu date, all his dealings with women had been for two reasons: business, at which he refused to blur the lines between personal and professional; and pleasure, the women he dated with the sole intention of bedding them. He’d enjoyed the time spent with them but it had been a means to an end, the end being in bed naked.

Alessandra was the first woman he’d gone on a date with whom he’d had no intention of bedding. He’d found her wildly attractive but she’d been so off-limits he’d curbed that side of his thought process with her. After a few glasses of champagne had loosened them both up, he’d found himself wildly fascinated by her, the mind beneath the beautiful face, not just the body beneath the dress she’d worn.

For the first time, he looked back on his behaviour before he’d met Alessandra with a sense of shame.

How many women had he bedded in his thirty-two years?

He couldn’t even hazard a guess.

He’d hopped from bed to bed without a second thought.

For the first time, he considered he’d been running, not hopping. Running as fast as he could.

Alessandra was the only woman whose bed he’d run from without immediately hopping into another.

From their first night together until she’d approached him at Rocco and Olivia’s wedding, there had been no one else. There still hadn’t been.

He hadn’t promised fidelity to her. So long as he was discreet, he could bed whomever he chose.

The problem, as he was learning, was that just because he could act like a kid in a sweetshop, his taste at that moment was for only one particular sweet. That sweet went by the name of Alessandra.

He didn’t believe he’d ever worked as hard as he had these past three weeks. He’d always been a hard, diligent worker but since his university days he’d always ensured there was time for fun.

The only fun he wanted now came in a slender package with a mane of glossy chestnut hair. There were times, especially late at night, when he heard movement from her room, when he would fight to remind himself why he couldn’t allow their relationship to be anything but platonic.

In his eyes, she was a princess.

He was a gutter rat.

He wasn’t good enough for her.

He would only bring her misery.

Better to keep things platonic for both their sakes and for the sake of their unborn baby.

It was harder than he’d ever imagined.

He straightened as Alessandra descended the stairs, the jewellery she wore around her wrist clanging against the railing she lightly gripped.

She never failed to take his breath away.

Tonight she wore a floor-length turquoise silk gown with only one long sleeve, gold and diamond beading around the neck line that slashed under her bare arm. The material layered like descending waves down to her feet, displaying her slender curves but hiding the slight burgeoning of her waistline. Tonight her neck was bare, the only complementary jewellery a chunky Egyptian bracelet and a pair of gold teardrop earrings. Her hair had been swept up into an elegant knot, her eyes dramatically darkened, her lips conversely painted a nude colour.

The Egyptian bracelet only accentuated the idea of an Egyptian queen having sprung to life.

An ache formed in his chest, a much different ache to the one coursing through his loins.

That bare, golden arm and shoulder were her only real bits of bodily flesh on display but the effect on him was as dramatic as if she’d walked down the stairs naked.

His mind filled with visions of peeling the dress from her…

He swallowed the imagery away and stepped forward to her, being greeted with a cloud of her sultry perfume in return.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘Grazie. You look good yourself.’

Alessandra had always found men wearing dinner jackets attractive—there was something so sophisticated and suave about the look—but Christian made other men’s attempts look like little boys playing dress-up. There was something about the way he filled it that made her pulses skip and her skin tingle.

If they had a proper marriage she would at least have the anticipation of ripping it off him when they got home…

Stop it, she scolded herself. Thoughts like that did nothing for her private mission of gaining immunity against him.

And nor did the darkening of his eyes, that look as if he wanted nothing more than to rip her clothes off too.

A rush of warm heat pooled in the apex of her thighs, so deep and sudden her legs weakened.

It was a look she hadn’t seen in three weeks.

Any immunity she might have managed to attain was ripped away in one fell swoop.

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHRISTIAN’S DRIVER PULLED up outside the embassy. No sooner had the engine been turned off than the door was opened for them and they were ushered out of the car amidst a hail of flashbulbs from the waiting paparazzi, who’d been tipped off that they were attending.

As they crossed the threshold of the historic building, Alessandra almost jumped out of her skin to feel Christian place his hand on the small of her back.

It was the first time he’d touched her since their wedding night.

It’s for the paparazzi’s benefit, she told herself.

When he clasped her hand into his much larger one, threading his fingers through hers, the nerves on her skin tingled with warmth, her fingers yearning to squeeze their possession.

Keeping a firm grip of her hand, he steered her around the room, introducing her to various bankers, investors and their partners and spouses.

She found it hard keeping track of names. Every time Christian’s body brushed against hers, her heart would skip and her mind would lose its train of thought.

When a waiter passed carrying a tray of canapés, she pounced, glad of a decent excuse to drop her husband’s hand.

It wasn’t just money and finance people wanted to talk to them about, though; many were keen to discuss the wedding, eager for the intimate details the press had only been able to guess at. They’d released a couple of photos to the media in the hope that having something publishable would help them lose interest.

‘They should give everyone name tags,’ she said after a few hours of small talk and endless canapés. Christian had noticed her springing lightly on her aching legs and, insisting she rest for a few minutes, had borne her off to some empty seats in an alcove.

A smile tugged at his lips. ‘It would make life easier.’

‘How many of these people do you actually know?’

‘Far too many of them.’

‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic.’

‘Finance doesn’t always attract the most charismatic of people.’

‘It attracted you.’

‘You think I’m charismatic?’

‘You know you are,’ she said with deliberate dismissal.

‘Is that a compliment?’ he asked, raising a brow in bemusement while his beautiful eyes glittered.

‘Take it however you want.’ She smiled at a passing woman they’d spoken to earlier, the wife of a diplomat. She couldn’t help but notice the woman’s gaze linger a touch too long on Christian.

Did she think he was charismatic?

Christian had more charisma than anyone she’d known. People were drawn to him. Women especially were drawn to him and it wasn’t the sole result of his good looks. She doubted the size of his bank account had much affect either—the magnetism he carried came from him.

‘Then I will take it as a compliment.’

‘Why finance?’ she asked, her interest piqued. ‘Of all the jobs and careers out there, why go that route?’

The bemusement dropped, the warmth in his eyes cooling. For a moment she thought he was going to ignore her innocent question.

Instead, he held her gaze. ‘When I was a small child, every night before she slept my mother would get the few drachmas she had to her name, place them in front of her and count them.’ He spoke slowly and concisely, as if he were thinking carefully about his answer. ‘I think she hoped that if she counted them enough times they would magically double. The only time I was ever able to make her happy was if I found a stray coin and brought it home to her.’

He shook his head, distaste pouring off him. ‘She worked so hard but we were so poor she couldn’t afford to pay for my school books. We had food in our belly from Mikolaj—whatever was left over from the day before—but there was no money for anything—not birthdays, not Christmas, not anything.’

Alessandra swallowed, the familiar ache forming in her belly that always came when she thought of his childhood. She hated imagining what he’d lived through.

His gaze bore into her. ‘I was obsessed with people like you.’

‘Me?’ she queried faintly.

‘I would see men and women like you, people who were clean and wore beautiful clothes, and wonder why we were so different, why the clothes my mother and I wore were falling into rags. Then I realised what the difference was: money. They had it and we didn’t. So that became my obsession. Money. I was determined to learn everything about it: how to earn it, how to make it grow and how to keep it so that my mother and I too could be clean and wear beautiful clothes.’

‘You certainly realised your dreams,’ she said quietly. ‘Did you have to study hard for it or did it come naturally to you?’

She thought back to her own single-sex education and how she had resented the strictness, rebelling by refusing to pay attention or do homework until it had become likely she would fail all her exams. If she’d applied herself a bit more, her grandfather would never have felt the need to employ a private tutor to help her catch up. Javier would never have entered her life. Who knew how different her life would have been if she’d never met him?

Would she have stayed a virgin until the age of twenty-five?

She hadn’t been ready for sex with Javier but with hindsight it was because she’d known, even without being aware of his wife and children, that a sexual affair between them was wrong. The balance of power had been too one-sided, in his favour.

But Javier was her reality. She didn’t know if she would have stayed a virgin until the age of twenty-five if she hadn’t met him because that would have been a different Alessandra, not the Alessandra she was today.

‘I studied every hour I could,’ Christian said, adopting the same quiet tone as she. ‘I must have been ten when I realised education was the only way either I or my mother could escape.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said softly after a long silence had formed between them.

‘For what?’

‘I don’t know.’ She raised her shoulders, wishing she could articulate the shame churning within her. She recalled the little rant she’d had in Mikolaj’s taverna when she’d put Christian in his place about him not having a monopoly on childhood pain and abandonment.

At least she’d always had clean clothes and fresh food. Materially she’d had everything she could have wished for; the things she’d been denied were to stop her being spoiled and not due to a lack of finances.

After the mess that had been her relationship with Javier, her grandfather had used money—her allowance—as another means to control her. No allowance meant no money; no money meant she stayed prisoner in the villa without the means to bring any more shame to the good Mondelli name.

A prisoner?

What a self-absorbed brat she had been.

Christian’s whole life came into sharp focus. No more potted snapshots of her Adonis, the hard working but poor scholarship student, the small child sharing a mattress in a cramped attic room with his harridan of a mother…

Now the snapshots formed a whole picture. Formed the man before her; everything it must have taken for him to drag himself out of the slum. Two decades of suffering before he’d had the opportunity to shower daily.

What must he think of her, the spoiled little rich kid? She knew she’d never been spoiled but in comparison to Christian she might as well have been Imelda Marcos. So her grandfather had been a workaholic and happy to pass the actual raising of his granddaughter to the female staff of his household? At least she’d never doubted his love. So he’d cut off her allowance? Oh, boo hoo. Her grandfather had been teaching her a lesson. Without it she would never have felt compelled to get herself a job, would never have answered the advertisement to be a photographer’s assistant and taken the first steps on the career she loved.

She’d been self-sufficient ever since.

She might not have had a mother or a father but she’d had her grandfather, strict as he was, and her brother, as protective as he was. Things might be tense at the moment but Rocco would always be there for her.

Christian hadn’t had any of that. Mikolaj had been there as best he could but with a business to run and seven kids of his own to raise it hadn’t been enough. Christian had basically been alone until he’d established the strong friendship group with her brother, Stefan and Zayed. A friendship that had been destroyed because of her.

‘Your mother…’

‘What about her?’ he asked tersely.

‘However crazy she makes you feel, you must love her very much.’

He breathed deeply. ‘I respect what she did for me as a child. She could have abandoned me but she didn’t. I do my duty towards her and will never abandon her. But love? She poisoned any notion I ever had of love.’

As Alessandra digested this, a silver fox of a man came over to join them in the alcove, a German she recalled Christian telling her was head of one of Europe’s major private banks.

‘Have I introduced you to my daughter?’ he asked, indicating a woman of around the same age as Alessandra who was hovering behind him.

‘I don’t believe so,’ Christian answered.

Silver Fox pulled his daughter to him. ‘Kerstin, this is Christian Markos and his wife, Alessandra.’

Kerstin’s eyes gleamed as she leaned in to kiss Christian’s cheeks, lingering to whisper something in his ear. A tall, blonde, impossibly glamorous and beautiful woman, she reminded Alessandra of old Hollywood. Her kisses to Alessandra were quick and perfunctory, the first thing that caused the word bitch to float in Alessandra’s mind.

‘Kerstin graduated a few years ago from your Alma Mater,’ Silver Fox said when the introductions were complete.

‘You studied at Columbia?’ Christian asked with interest.

‘I did,’ she said with a knowing smile.

So she had brains as well as beauty?

‘I seem to recall your father saying something about it, but that was quite a few years ago,’ he mused. ‘Are you planning on following in his footsteps?’

‘Ja—when Papa retires the plan is for me to take over his role.’

‘That’s something I wanted to talk to you about,’ Silver Fox said, addressing Christian. ‘Kerstin and I feel she needs to expand her horizons. We would like you to taking her under your wing for a year or two so she can learn directly from you different aspects of our business.’

Over my dead body.

‘That’s an interesting idea,’ Christian said, turning his attention directly to Kerstin. ‘What are you hoping to learn from me?’

‘Everything!’ Thus said, Kerstin proceeded to discuss in great detail what she hoped to achieve under his tutelage, most of which went straight over Alessandra’s head. This wasn’t through a lack of understanding on her part, more to do with the raging burn in her brain that glowed so brightly, nothing else could penetrate.

If she had claws she would scratch Kerstin’s eyes out without a second thought.

With a snap, she knew who Kerstin reminded her of and why she’d taken such an instant dislike to her.

She reminded her of all the women she’d ever seen photographed on Christian’s arm.

His interest in her—the way he leaned in closely to hear what she had to say, the obvious interest in his expression—was all so clear a highly polished window couldn’t have been more transparent.

Feeling everything inside her clench, she forced her ears to tune in to the conversation.

Now it really did fly over her head.

When it came to financial matters, the most Alessandra ever needed to know was the amount in her personal and business bank accounts and what income and outgoings she had. When she heard the word securities banded about in all earnestness, the only thing her brain conjured up were her bodyguards.

She wasn’t stupid; she knew that. But finance was its own separate language, one she didn’t know how to translate.

Kerstin did. Kerstin spoke fluent finance.

Alessandra placed a hand on her belly as if by covering it she could protect the tiny life within from the thoughts raging through its mother’s head.

By marrying her, Christian had deprived himself of a marriage that would be far better suited to him.

Kerstin would be perfect. She had the physical attributes he so desired—Alessandra doubted any man would get bored of making love to her—but, more importantly from her husband’s point of view, there would be no juggling of time, no compromise. Kerstin would flit into his life as if she’d been born there and then, when her father retired, she and Christian would take over the running of his bank together.

Dio, now her brain was running away from her. She couldn’t make it stop.

They’d been in the woman’s company for twenty minutes and already Alessandra had mapped her entire future out for her.

Christian had never wanted to marry. He’d given up his freedom for their baby. He was trying to accommodate the mother of his baby into his life as well as he could.

He might never have wanted to marry but he did want children.

If he’d met Kerstin tonight as a single man, would he too have grasped what an ideal wife she would have made for him?

They’d have been perfect together, could have made beautiful babies over a set of spreadsheets then whispered sweet nothings about the world of finance into each other’s ears until the early hours of every morning.

‘Are you okay?’ Christian asked quietly, breaking into her runaway thoughts.

She swallowed and jerked a nod. ‘I think I have indigestion,’ she said, uttering the first thing that came into her mind.

His blue eyes studied her, a question mark in them.

‘I must have eaten too many spanakopita,’ she expanded, referring to the mini filo-pastry pies stuffed with spinach and feta she’d taken a liking to. At her last count she’d eaten eight of them.

Her appetite had deserted her now. Her stomach felt so tight she doubted anything would go down.

‘Would you like to go home?’ Did he have to look so concerned when she was playing an imaginary game of marrying him off to someone else? A more suitable someone else.

‘No, I’ll be fine.’ She forced a smile. ‘Carry on with your conversation—I need to visit the bathroom.’

A few minutes later, after a sharp talking to herself in the privacy of a cubicle, she was washing her hands when Kerstin walked in.

The hot, burning feeling in Alessandra’s brain immediately started up again.

‘Is something the matter?’ Kerstin asked.

Dio, now Christian’s future imaginary wife was looking at her with concern.

‘Not at all.’ She forced another brittle smile.

A knowing expression came into Kerstin’s eyes. ‘My sister have a baby soon. You are the same, ja?’

‘How can you tell?’ Not only was she beautiful and intelligent but also psychic.

‘My sister has had many babies,’ Kerstin said with a laugh.

‘Please don’t tell anyone,’ Alessandra beseeched. ‘We’re not ready for the world to know.’

‘All those men chasing you with their cameras…is not nice.’

Beautiful, intelligent, psychic and empathetic?

Had a more perfect woman ever been born?

Kerstin looked openly at Alessandra’s belly. ‘I think you hide it for not much longer. Soon you will show.’

She stated the latter with such certainty that for a moment Alessandra was tempted to ask exactly how much later, right down to the hour.

Instead she fought back the sudden spring of hot tears welling in her eyes.

Kerstin saw them too and placed a comforting arm around her shoulder. ‘Your hormone will feel better soon.’

Alessandra gave a shaky laugh, accepting the tissue Kerstin magically produced.

At least she had one advantage over the beautiful German woman. Her own English was much better.

‘You’re very quiet,’ Christian said. They’d been in the car for ten minutes since leaving the embassy and Alessandra had spent the entire time gazing out of the window.

She’d become increasingly quiet since their wedding. It was only tonight, when she’d been her old, sociable self, that he’d realised quite how withdrawn she’d become.

Was he the cause? Had his mother’s prediction already started coming true?

He wanted to reach out to her and find out what troubled her but didn’t know how.

She raised a shoulder—the bare shoulder he’d spent the evening trying not to stare at. It had been an effort of epic proportions that had failed. That one naked limb had acted like a beacon to his eyes. The rest of her had acted as a beacon to his senses.

Holding her hand, feeling her warm, slender body brushing against him…

All the good work he’d done in recent weeks building a distance from her had crumbled.

Theos, he ached for her. Ached to possess her all over again with a burn so deep it was like fighting through treacle fog to remember why he had to keep his distance.

‘Are you going to take Kerstin on?’ she surprised him by asking.

‘I haven’t decided.’ On paper Kerstin was an ideal candidate for his ever-growing empire, having the perfect qualifications and aptitude. Her father was a long-standing, respected member of the finance community. Yes, on paper she was ideal.

But he hadn’t imagined the tension emanating from Alessandra when he’d been talking to her. He didn’t want to do anything that would make his wife uncomfortable.

‘I think you should.’

‘What? Take her on?’

Alessandra turned her head to look at him. Her features were still, sombre, even. ‘She’s perfect.’

It was too dark to read her eyes.

‘If I were to take her on in the capacity she and her father have requested, she will do a lot of travelling with us,’ he stated carefully.

‘She will do a lot of travelling with you,’ Alessandra clarified. ‘In another month or so, we can stop zigzagging the world together. Our schedules will thank us for it,’ she added drily.

‘Let us consider that in another month,’ he said, his mouth filling with an acrid taste at the thought of travelling without Alessandra by his side. The acridness turned sweet as he thought of how travelling made her sleep. How many hours had he spent these past few weeks on his jet, taking advantage of her oblivion to study her sleeping form, reminding himself over and over why he could only look at her? Theos, he wanted to touch her so badly.

She raised her shoulders in a sign of nonchalance, a smile playing on her lips. It was too dark to tell if her eyes smiled too. ‘I do think you should consider taking Kerstin on. Every billionaire should have a decent protégée.’

‘I thought our child would be a good candidate as my protégé.’

‘It will be a long time before our child is old enough for that. Consider Kerstin as practice.’

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ he mused. Taking Kerstin under his wing would certainly strengthen the ties between himself and her father, Gregor, a very powerful man in the European banking world. To take Kerstin under his wing would put Gregor in his debt. Debts of a personal nature were their own form of currency.

Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t hesitate. As Alessandra had pointed out, Kerstin was perfect. She was highly intelligent, multilingual and already had an excellent grasp of his business. His job would involve fine-tuning that grasp.

Moonlight seeped in the windows, the light bouncing off Alessandra’s bare arm, giving it a silver glow.

That naked arm. How could any man concentrate on anything for longer than a few seconds with that in his eyeline?

All it made him think of was the rest of her naked too.

Do not think of her naked.

It was hard enough sitting in an enclosed cabin in the back of a car with her without bringing memories of her beautiful naked form to his mind’s eye.

Self-enforced celibacy clearly did not agree with him.

How could any man cope with celibacy whilst living with such temptation?

He gave a silent prayer of thanks as his driver turned the car into the long driveway.

They were home.

In silence they entered the villa. The live-in staff had long since retired to their own quarters for the night.

Tiny nightlights glowed from the reception through to the living area and up the stairs, bathing Alessandra in a dim light that magnified her sultry beauty.

The ache in his groin, far from diminishing as he’d valiantly willed it to do in the car, increased, his arousal spreading from his loins…

That damn bare arm…

She paused at the bottom of the staircase to look at him. ‘Thank you for a nice evening–’

‘You have enjoyed yourself?’ he cut in, delaying the time she would climb the stairs and head to her room.

‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ she answered with a wry smile. ‘It was hardly a night of music and dancing but it was a lot less stuffy than I expected.’

‘That’s good. I don’t want you feeling uncomfortable when we go to these functions.’

She nodded, looking away. ‘Well, good night.’

He inclined his head in return, fighting to keep his feet from crossing the marble floor to her. ‘Good night.’

Holding on to the rail, she climbed the stairs and crossed the landing to her bedroom. Only when she reached her door did she turn her head to look back round and gaze down at him.

Then she disappeared inside her room, closing the door firmly behind her.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ALESSANDRA’S PHONE VIBRATED in her pocket. Grimacing, she fired off a couple more shots then carefully let go of her camera, which she kept around her neck. ‘You can change into the next set now,’ she said to the model standing in front of the white board, wearing nothing but a pair of skimpy knickers and bra.

She’d spent the past three days working on a shoot for a well-known lingerie brand. With a waist that seemed to be thickening by the day, spending days with semi-clad underwear models was not doing a great deal for her ego. Her pregnancy would soon be obvious to everyone.

She pulled her phone out, her heart skipping to see Christian’s name flash up. She read his message:

Just landed. How long are you going to be?

She fired off a quick reply.

A couple of hours. Meet you at my apartment.

When they weren’t physically together, most communication between them was done via messaging. She’d steered it that way. The first time he’d called after the embassy do a month ago, her hands had gone clammy just to see his name flash up in the screen. She’d stared at it until it had gone to voicemail, wiped her hands and written a quick message back, apologising that she’d missed his call. He’d messaged straight back. The next few times she’d done the same—avoided the call and then messaged him. Since then, he’d taken to messaging her without bothering to call. It made it easier for her. Having his rich tones play directly into her ear made more than her hands clammy.

Shoving her phone back in her pocket, she forced her concentration back to the skinny model, who’d changed into another lacy number with the help of an assistant, uncaring of who in the studio saw her fully naked.

‘Left arm in an arc above your head please,’ she said, lifting her camera back up to her face.

When the final frame was taken she packed her camera away, had a quick chat with her assistant, who was happy to pack everything else up, and left the building.

Soon she was nodding at the concierge and climbing the stairs to her apartment, grabbing the extra seconds gained by not using the lift to compose her thoughts and get her emotions in check.

Only three days apart, the longest since they’d been married.

She’d hoped the distance would be good for her.

Christian sat at the dining table, cradling a coffee and eating a bowl of pasta.

‘I saved you some,’ he said by way of greeting. ‘I thought you might be getting hungry.’

Alessandra had taken her health seriously from the moment she’d realised she was pregnant but since she’d entered the second trimester, she’d become fanatical about her diet.

Food and calorie intake she could control and she did so rigidly, making sure everything she ingested was as nutritionally perfect for her baby as it could be.

It was the only thing she could control. Everything else seemed to be slipping through her fingers.

‘How was Hong Kong?’ she asked, walking over to her little office space in the corner which was a little too close to the dining table than she liked. Being in Milan made it harder for her to tune Christian out. The apartment she’d always thought of as wonderfully spacious seemed to shrink whenever he was there with her.

God knew she was trying to keep her distance from him, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible.

Thankfully her work load had increased. The days she wasn’t on shoots were spent developing the results, spent in meetings with directors whether in person or via conference calls; being busy.

Conversely, Christian’s workload had seemed to abate. He now made it home at a decent time most evenings.

Now it was Alessandra holing herself away, burying herself in work. Avoiding him as much as she could.

It was the only way she could keep herself sane.

She’d never imagined marriage would be so hard emotionally, a feeling exacerbated at Stefan’s wedding to the beautiful Clio a couple of weeks ago. It had been a wonderful occasion but watching them exchange their vows had brought everything back about her own wedding day and the hope she’d been foolish enough to allow through.

She’d never imagined she would feel so emotional towards him.

‘No problems,’ he said. ‘The contract was signed.’

‘How did Kerstin get on?’ Good. Her voice was normal as she spoke the German’s name.

‘Very well. She’s staying in Hong Kong for a few days.’

Kerstin had started working for him a couple of weeks before. Right at the exact time as Alessandra’s nutrition control had taken on a life of its own.

Typically of Christian, as soon as he’d decided on a course of action he implemented it immediately. He’d decided they should marry—a month later it was done. He’d decided to employ Kerstin—a fortnight later she was his new protégée.

‘That’s good.’ Taking a seat at her desk, she fired up her laptop.

‘Are you working?’

‘We don’t have to leave for half an hour.’

‘I wanted to talk.’

‘About?’

‘We need to start looking for a proper house here in Milan. One we can raise a child in.’

She shrugged. ‘Go ahead.’

‘I’ve spoken to a property agent.’

‘Naturally.’

‘I’ve shortlisted a couple of homes we can look at after we’ve seen the obstetrician.’

She could feel his eyes upon her as she placed her memory stick into the side of the laptop. Her hands trembled.

‘We need to get moving on this,’ he continued. ‘I’ve asked the agent to provide a valuation for this place too.’

She snapped her head round to stare at him. ‘I don’t want to sell it.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘We agreed…’

‘No, you agreed. I’ll let you know when I’m ready.’

Christian counted to ten in his head, fighting to keep his features neutral.

He pushed his bowl across the table and got to his feet. ‘We should leave now.’

‘We’ve plenty of time.’

‘It’s always good to be ahead of the traffic.’

He didn’t want to argue with her, especially not prior to their appointment with the obstetrician, but if he stayed another minute in this damned apartment he would go crazy.

He’d given her carte blanche to redecorate all his homes to her own taste so she would come to think of them as her homes too, and what did he get in return? Nothing.

This was Alessandra’s apartment, not his. She had no intention of ever making it theirs.

It probably wouldn’t bother him so much if not for the fact that the distance between them now came from her, a state of affairs that had grown since the embassy function. Even at Stefan’s wedding she’d been distant, when normally she thrived at social events.

If he’d thought she was happy with the status quo it wouldn’t disturb him so much but, whenever he looked in her eyes, all he saw was unhappiness. When she was with him, she withdrew into herself. He was doing everything in his power to bring her spark back but she resisted at every turn. There were times when he thought he saw glimmers of it, generally if a magazine was released with her photography in it or if they passed a billboard she’d created—her face would light up like an enchanted child’s.

It pained him to see her so withdrawn. It unnerved him. It reminded him too much of how things had been with his mother, when nothing he did made any difference to her mood.

Today, he was determined to get to the bottom of it—he would learn whatever it was troubling her and fix it, whether she wanted to talk about it or not.

She must have seen the no-nonsense light in his eyes for she pursed her lips together, slapped the lid of her laptop down and grabbed her handbag.

‘Let’s go, then.’

All was good with the obstetrician. Alessandra was healthy. Her blood pressure was normal. Their baby’s heartbeat was strong. Yes. All was good. Christian always left those appointments feeling lighter.

The good feelings dissipated quicker than normal this time. They’d visited a number of homes in excellent parts of Milan, all large enough to raise a football team, if they so wished, with rooms to spare. Alessandra’s interest had been minimal. Grudging.

It only added to his intuition that something was seriously wrong with her.

‘Let’s get something to eat,’ he said after the third viewing. Maybe she was tired.

She didn’t argue. ‘Where do you want to go?’

He was about to suggest somewhere quiet where they could talk but had a flashback of their date and the trendy restaurant she had led them to. The lively atmosphere there had certainly played its part, along with the alcohol, in loosening them up. Maybe it would have the same effect on her again. ‘Let’s go to Nandini’s.’

He shook the agent by the hand, promised to be in touch soon and waited for Alessandra to get into the back of the waiting car.

Instead she met his eye. ‘Can we walk? It’s not far.’

He gazed down at her feet. Only small heels on the black boots she wore. Almost practical. Ever the fashionista, though, she wore a black-and-white drop-waisted mini-dress. The gap between the hem of the dress and the top of her boots was tantalising him to the point of distraction.

If anyone looked closely or from a profile view, they would see the hint of a burgeoning bump beneath it.

They walked in silence down the bustling streets, past tourists and locals alike, gazing through windows at the glamorous wares of the now closed shops, and into a narrow street packed with cafés and bars. People sat on tables outside, smoking, eating, drinking and enjoying the weather.

When they’d dined in Nandini’s that last time, it had been a Friday evening and the place had been full of people ready to let their hair down after a hard week of work.

Tonight, a Wednesday, it was much quieter. Even the music was on a lower setting, no longer loud enough to burst your eardrums.

A waiter took her jacket then showed them to their booth. She slid onto the long leather seat with obvious relief.

‘Are your feet hurting?’ he asked.

‘A little.’ She opened the menu. ‘I’ve been on them all day.’

‘Then why did you want to walk?’ It made no sense to him. That was why he had a driver at his disposal at all times.

Alessandra shrugged. ‘I like walking.’ She didn’t add that she couldn’t face sitting in the back of the car with him any more.

She’d felt his irritation at her attitude to the beautiful homes they’d been shown round. And they were beautiful, palatial in size and structure, the kind of homes any little girl dreaming of being a princess would love to live in. But those little girls also dreamt of living in their palatial homes with their princes, not with the man who’d married them so he could have legal rights to their child.

It wasn’t that she worried he would bawl her out for her ungrateful attitude—God alone knew, she wished she’d been blessed with acting genes so she could fake pleasure for him—because he didn’t bawl her out over anything. She knew when she displeased him, though. He might not verbalise it, keeping his anger contained within him, but it was there in his eyes and the tone of his voice when he wasn’t quick enough to curb it.

She wished he would bawl her out. At least it would show he felt something for her, that she was worth expending some hot air arguing with.

The main reason she hadn’t wanted to sit in the back of the car with him was because spending time alone with him had the effect of turbo-charging her emotions. It would be easier to contain if it were just sexual feelings but it ran so much deeper than that. Whenever they listened to their baby’s heartbeat, she longed to reach out to him and clasp his hand, to unite for those few magical seconds.

Sitting alone in the back of the car with him, his hard, warm body so close…

She wanted to reach out and grab more than his hand. She wanted to climb onto his lap and nuzzle into that strong neck that smelled so good, taste the smooth skin…

Far from the distance she’d imposed lessening these longings, it had only increased them. She needed proper physical distance, and not just emotional distance, because keeping only an emotional distance wasn’t working. The three days apart they’d just had were nothing. Three months might do the trick.

At least tomorrow she had an overnight trip to London without him.

They ordered their meals and drinks, both opting to go straight into the main course. While they waited, they chewed on breadsticks and made idle small talk.

She remembered that first date, here in this restaurant. They’d had to sit close to each other to make themselves heard. They’d talked about anything and everything, their conversation easy.

Tonight it felt as if she were dragging barbed wire from her throat.

As was normal, Christian’s phone vibrated at regular intervals.

‘You should answer it,’ she said upon the fourth vibration.

He shrugged. ‘Whoever it is can wait.’

‘It might be important.’

His eyes fixed on hers. ‘This is important.’

‘Si, food is very important,’ she answered, as if making light of it could evaporate the growing tension.

A bowl of butternut squash and spinach ravioli with strips of crispy pancetta and flakes of parmesan was placed before her. She didn’t know which dish she liked the look of more, hers or Christian’s cotoletta alla Milanese which looked equally divine.

‘Would you like to try some?’ He held up his fork, a good helping of breaded cutlet on it.

‘No, no, you eat it.’ Quickly she forked a delicate raviolo into her mouth, dropping her eyes away from his thoughtful expression.

‘Are you still travelling to Tokyo next week?’ he asked, referring to a fashion shoot she’d been booked for for one of Japan’s up-and-coming fashion houses. She was looking forward to the trip. Five whole days away from him.

‘I was thinking I’d meet up with you there,’ he added. ‘I’ve some clients in Tokyo I need to touch base with.’

‘Don’t rearrange your schedule on my behalf.’ Never mind the distance she wanted to take advantage of, he’d made enough sacrifices for her. If all his sacrifices had been purely for the baby’s sake, she could have lived with it. But they weren’t. He’d made sacrifices for her too. The more she thought of them all, the more nauseous it made her feel.

‘I want to,’ he said, his voice dropping.

‘I think the press are convinced about our marriage now,’ she said, keeping her attention firmly on the bowl of food before her. ‘I haven’t been stalked for days.’

‘I’m surprised they haven’t picked up on the pregnancy yet.’

‘So am I.’ It was only a matter of time.

‘I will still travel with you. I don’t like the thought of you being away for a week without me.’

‘It’s only five days, not a week,’ she corrected. ‘I’ve been travelling with my job since I was eighteen. I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself.’

‘You weren’t my wife then. Is there something wrong with me wanting to spend time with you?’

Yes, she wanted to scream. There was everything wrong with it. Every minute they spent together made her heart hurt even more that their marriage could never be real, that the love she felt for him could never be reciprocated…

Love?

Where had that thought sprung from?

Amore?

Frantically she fought with herself to deny it, to refute the obvious.

Dear God, had she really fallen in love with her husband?

No. She couldn’t be that foolish. She wouldn’t be.

In a flash, she remembered the first time she’d seen him, sitting with the rest of the Brat Pack in her brother’s den, drinking beer and watching football.

Little Alessandra had taken one look at the blond Adonis and immediately pictured him on a white horse coming to rescue her from the tower where the evil witch held her.

A young girl’s crush, that was all it had been. She’d had plenty of them: pop stars, film stars—her bedroom walls had been littered with posters of her favourites. Christian had seemed as remote to her young self as they had been.

Whenever she’d studied the tabloids with stories and pictures of him, and whoever was the latest woman hanging off his arm, she’d felt a funny tugging deep in the pit of her belly. She’d never understood the feeling or what it meant. But now she did understand it.

Her heart had belonged to Christian from that first look.

She’d never imagined any of the pop stars or film stars rescuing her on a white steed. Only Christian.

He hadn’t rescued her. He hadn’t saved her. All he’d done was unlock her heart.

She’d always wondered how his women could swallow his lies, had assumed he must have lied to them to get so many of them into his bed.

He didn’t lie. He didn’t need to. Women wanted him regardless. She wanted him regardless.

She always had.

‘Alessandra?’

She darted her eyes to him.

‘Is something the matter? You’ve gone very pale.’

She shook her head with vigour, part in denial and part to clear the burn scratching the back of her retinas. ‘Will Kerstin come to Tokyo with us?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.’

‘Have you slept with her yet?’ The question escaped before she could contain it.

‘Ochi! What kind of question is that?’

‘An obvious one.’

‘No, I have not slept with Kerstin, and I am insulted you would think I have.’

‘Don’t be insulted. It’s only a matter of time.’

A dangerous silence followed.

When she looked at him, Christian’s eyes had darkened and fixed on her, a pulse throbbing at the junction where his earlobe met his jaw.

Not taking his eyes from her face, he put his knife and fork together on his half-eaten meal and dabbed at his mouth with his napkin, which he then screwed into a ball and released onto his plate.

‘Get your things together,’ he said, rising to his feet and throwing some euros onto the table. ‘We’re leaving. I’ll wait outside for you.’

She watched him retreat, her heart hammering so hard she could feel the beats in her mouth.

Even her legs were shaking, her whole body one mass vibration of cold fear and misery.

Their waiter appeared with her jacket. ‘Is something wrong with your meal?’ he asked anxiously.

‘No, it’s delicious. My husband’s remembered an appointment, that’s all.’

As promised, Christian stood outside on the pavement with his arms folded.

His car pulled up in front of them. Christian didn’t wait for the driver to get out, opening the back door himself and indicating for Alessandra to get in.

She waited until the car was in motion before attempting to apologise. ‘I’m sorry if I…’

‘I am not prepared to have this discussion in the back of a car,’ he said grimly.

‘But…’

‘Ochi!’ he said with such finality she clamped her lips together lest she say anything else.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ONCE INSIDE THE APARTMENT, Alessandra hurried to hang up her jacket and remove her boots. ‘I’m going to make myself a camomile tea. Do you want anything?’

‘No.’ Christian’s answer was curt. She could feel his anger rippling beneath the surface, just as it had on the drive back from the restaurant when he’d sat beside her with arms folded so tightly she could see the muscles bunched beneath his shirt.

Now his hands were rammed firmly into his pockets.

She headed straight for the kitchen area and with shaking hands filled the kettle. Camomile tea, while not the most palatable of hot drinks, was famed for its calming abilities. Maybe it would help soothe the tumult of emotions shredding her.

Dio l’aiuti, she loved him.

‘I’m struggling to understand some things,’ Christian said in a tone calm and reasonable. She could hear the undercurrent of wrath beneath it, though. ‘I took Kerstin on at your behest.’

Keeping her back to him, she took a teabag from the container. ‘You wanted her anyway.’ How could he not? Kerstin was perfect. She was everything that she, Alessandra, was not. For a start, Kerstin would never be so careless about contraception. If Christian was to have a family with the German woman it would be because they both chose it and not out of a sense of duty.

‘Not in the way you’re implying.’

‘You should.’

‘What should I want? To sleep with her?’

Did he really expect her to believe his incredulity? This from the man who hadn’t touched her, his wife, since the night they’d exchanged their vows. He hadn’t laid a single finger on her.

‘Why not? She’s a beautiful, intelligent woman.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘That doesn’t mean I want to have sex with her.’

‘Of course you do. She’s exactly your type, all long legs and blonde hair.’ Deliberately, she tossed her hair back and flashed a smile. Hold it together, Alessandra, please; just a few more minutes, keep it together, then this conversation will be over and you can breathe again. Her fingers dug into the palm of her hands so tightly she could feel her nails pierce the skin. ‘Honestly, Christian, I think you’re mad for not wanting to sleep with her. She’s perfect for you.’

‘I’m married to you. I chose you.’

His words cut through her, slicing through her heart and deep into her marrow.

Lies. Lies. Lies.

‘You chose me?’ she asked slowly, her ears ringing, her heart thundering so hard it reverberated through her skin.

‘You know I did. I made my vows to you.’

Alessandra twisted round so quickly Christian could have sworn she’d performed a pirouette.

The smile she’d been wearing since their return to the apartment had been nothing but a mask that now ripped away to reveal the savagery beneath the surface.

‘You chose me?’

‘Alessandra…’

‘You chose me?’ Her husky voice rose with every syllable. Before he knew what was happening, she’d grabbed her cup and thrown it at the far wall. White china exploded upon impact, large chunks flying onto the wooden floor, smaller shards landing like darts around the larger pieces.

‘What the…?’

‘You didn’t choose me. You didn’t choose to be my husband; you chose to be a father.’ Her face was dark with colour, her eyes wild, feral.

He strove for composure. ‘Parakalo. Please, agapi mou, I need you to calm down.’

‘Do not call me that. Whatever it means, you don’t mean it.’

‘It means—’

‘I don’t care what it means!’ Her voice had risen to a scream. ‘You want me to calm down? Don’t you like me throwing cups? Well, how about plates? Is that what Greek housewives do when their husbands don’t want them? Do they throw plates?’

The bowl of pasta Christian had been eating out of earlier, which had been left in the sink, went flying the same way as the cup. Without pausing for breath, she swung open the door of the cupboard that contained all the crockery.

‘Alessandra, that’s enough,’ he commanded.

‘Don’t tell me what’s enough.’

He lunged for her before she could throw the plate she’d taken hold of, grabbing her wrist with one hand and relieving her of the plate with the other. ‘I said that’s enough.’

Heart pounding, blood surging with adrenaline, he kicked the cupboard door shut, flung the plate on the work surface then pressed her against it, using his strength and height to trap her.

She pushed against him furiously, bucking. ‘Bastardo! Let me go.’

‘I will let you go when you’ve calmed down.’

‘I am calm!’ she shouted.

‘Listen to me,’ he said, trapping her face in his hands, forcing her to look at him. ‘I do not want to sleep with Kerstin. The only woman I want to sleep with is you.’

Her eyes raged with so many emotions he didn’t know where to begin counting them. ‘Bugiardo. Liar.’

‘When have I ever lied to you? Name one instance.’

‘I…’ Her voice trailed off, became smaller. ‘You don’t want me. You’ve rejected me since we married.’

‘Not want you? Can you not feel how turned on I am?’ He laughed cynically. As if she could fail to feel his erection pressed against her abdomen.

That was what happened when you were starved for the woman you wanted more than you’d thought humanly possible. One touch and the body turned to lava, no matter how inappropriate the situation or how vainly you tried to control it.

‘I thought I was doing the right thing.’

Her plump lips parted, closed then parted again. ‘Why?’

The solitary word came out as a breathless rush, but air did escape, warm, sweet air that filled his nostrils and penetrated down, burrowing through his skin, his veins, down into his arteries and pumping through him in a great rush of need.

Why? All he saw were those lips, luscious invitations to sin.

Why?

He no longer knew. All he knew for certain in that moment was that if he didn’t feel those plump lips on his again he would never know the answer to anything.

He crushed his mouth to hers.

There was no resistance.

A tiny, guttural noise came from her throat and she melted into him, weaving her arms around his neck, her nails scraping the nape of his neck, her mouth moving beneath his as she kissed him back, kissing him with a violence that made the heat deep within him enflame and his heart beat like a thousand drums had been let loose within him.

Still devouring her with his mouth, he raised her onto the work surface, her legs parting to wrap around his waist.

Her hands were everywhere, yanking at his shirt to loosen it from his trousers and burrowing up, her small fingers sweeping up his chest, marking him with her heat.

Theos, but she felt amazing.

He found the zip of her dress, was about to tug it down, when Alessandra suddenly wrenched her mouth away from his, pressed a hand to his chest and pushed.

‘No,’ she said, her tone biting. ‘Do not try and distract me by trying to have sex with me. I am not a toy to be played with and then discarded.’ She slid down onto the floor and glared at him. Her chest heaved. ‘You were going to tell me why you’ve rejected me since our wedding night.’

Christian raked a hand through his hair, trying valiantly to stem the pumping of his blood. Her taste was there on his tongue, under his nose.

Theos, he wanted to be inside her.

Taking deep breaths, he turned away to rummage through a cupboard. Weeks ago she’d brought a bottle of bourbon to keep in her apartment for him, a gesture that had touched him. A gesture he was now thankful for as a method of numbing his heightened body a fraction.

He’d been on the brink of losing his control with her. Again.

He poured himself a measure and downed it before facing her.

She leant back against the work surface, arms folded across her chest.

This was what he’d wanted just ten minutes ago. For them to talk. For her to tell him what was troubling her. Was it really the lack of sex within their marriage that had caused it? Or something deeper?

What he hadn’t expected or wanted was for her to demand the conversation start with him.

‘We married for one reason and one reason only,’ he reminded her.

‘Our baby,’ she supplied flatly.

‘Yes. For our baby. It’s the only reason we married. We did not marry for ourselves. I became concerned that your feelings for me had developed beyond mere convenience.’

Her eyebrows shot upwards. ‘You were concerned about my feelings?’

‘Alessandra…you are an incredibly sexy woman. I would have shared your bed every night since our wedding but I didn’t want you mistaking good sex for real emotions.’

‘Why would you have thought that? Because I’m a woman and incapable of separating my emotions?’

‘No.’ It was the light and hope in her eyes when she’d looked at him at their wedding. It was the desolation he’d caught glimpses of these past few weeks.

Alessandra rolled her eyes but there was a definite tremor in her voice. ‘And you wonder why I don’t want to sell my apartment? Where else am I supposed to go when our marriage falls apart?’

‘That is not going to happen. There is no reason for us to fall apart provided we stick to our original agreement.’

‘And what if our original agreement doesn’t suit me any more?’

A cold chill swept up his spine.

‘This is my home,’ she continued. ‘You talk about wanting to leave a legacy for our child? Well, this place is my legacy. It’s the only thing that’s all mine, that I can leave. I’m not prepared to give it up for a man who can’t commit to a real marriage.’

‘We have a real marriage. Real to us. We both meant our vows.’

‘No, we do not. Our marriage is no more real than a winged unicorn.’

‘Where is all this coming from?’ he demanded. The thumping in his ribs no longer had any connection to desire or lust. Fear knotted in his guts but he knew not what the fear was of. ‘You knew the score from the start—it’s what we agreed on. It’s what we both wanted.’

‘But now I want something else. I want something more.’ Alessandra had seen the way Rocco and Olivia were together. If her brother could find love and be happy…

She had found love too. The problem was she had found it with her husband.

‘More? What kind of more?’ He spoke as if it were a dirty word.

‘I want everything. I want a husband to sleep with every night, not just for sex but to curl up to. I want to wake up every morning and know that the man I love loves me in return and doesn’t regard me as a means to an end. I want it all.’

Christian looked as if he’d been sucker-punched. ‘Have you met someone else—is that what all this is about?’

‘No.’ She stared at him, willing him to understand.

She couldn’t hide any more. This was the point of no return. Time for her to lay her cards on the table and see where it took them, for good or ill. ‘There is only you.’

She watched as his powerful body froze, the only movement coming from his blue eyes which darkened and pulsed, the look in them as if he were seeing her for the very first time.

‘Please, say something,’ she beseeched.

‘For the love of God—Alessandra, that is not what our marriage is about.’

Her heart lurching so violently she feared she would be sick, she brushed past him, reached for the bottle of bourbon, poured a measure then thrust the glass into his hand.

After he’d downed it and slammed the glass on the work surface, she stood before him and gazed right into his eyes. ‘Can you ever love me?’

His face went so white it would have been comical had the situation not been so serious.

‘Neither of us believe in love. It’s what makes us so compatible.’

How she wished she could have a proper drink too. Just as well she couldn’t—the aroma of bourbon playing under her nose made her belly recoil. Or was that terror of where this conversation was going?

Retreat wasn’t an option. Not any more. Their time had come.

‘This is all your fault,’ she said starkly, holding his eyes, refusing to let their hold drop. ‘When we married, all I felt towards you was a severe degree of lust. If we’d kept it at sex, I probably would have been fine—lust is intransigent. It would have fizzled out eventually.’ But as she spoke the words, she realised them to be a lie. She’d already been in love with him.

‘Instead, you withdrew physically,’ she continued. ‘But you’ve been…good to me. You look out for me but don’t try and inhibit or stifle me. You’re supportive and enthusiastic. You made me trust you.’

Something flickered in his eyes at her utterance of the word trust. She hardly believed it herself but it was the truth. Somewhere along the line she had begun to trust him. She’d fought it and fought it but it had crept up on her all the same. Just as her love for him had.

‘If I’m such a good guy then what is the problem here?’

‘This pregnancy has changed me. You’ve changed me. I deserve love and all that it can give. And so do you.’

‘Do you hear what you’re saying?’ he asked roughly, his eyes wild as he took a step back. ‘All this crap about love when we both know all it does is destroy people.’

‘No, it does not! Love only destroys if the person allows it. My father allowed it and so did your mother. We don’t have to be like them.’

‘You’re right—we don’t. And we won’t. People who take the risk are weak and foolish and I am neither of those things. I thought you were better than that too.’

‘Then I must be weak and stupid.’

‘I can’t be the man you think you want,’ he warned. ‘I have no capacity to love and, even if I did, I’ve grown up seeing how dangerous it can be and the knock-on effects it has on everyone else.

‘Where are you going?’ he demanded when she suddenly turned away and headed for her bedroom.

‘To pack.’

‘For where?’

‘London.’

‘Your flight doesn’t leave until the morning.’

‘I’ll see if I can get a sooner one.’ She flung her wardrobe doors open, pulled out her small carry-on case and placed it on the bed.

He didn’t love her.

He would never love her. He wouldn’t even try.

‘Can you call me a cab, please?’

‘You’re not going anywhere. Not until we’ve talked this through.’

‘We’re talking it through right now.’ She selected some clothes and placed them neatly in the case, then dug her phone from her pocket and pressed the app that would send a taxi straight to the apartment building. ‘We can stay married until the baby is born, so you can have the legal rights you want, and then we can divorce. I’m sure we can find an amicable solution to custody—’

She started to zip her case but Christian wrenched it from her, whipping it away and hurtling it to the floor with a slam. She didn’t think she had ever seen him so angry. Not that anger was the correct word for the wildness surrounding him.

She could hardly blame him. She was destroying the future they had planned. But that had been a future before she’d fallen in love with him.

He gripped her shoulders. ‘We made a promise to each other and our child to be a family. You’re breaking that promise. I will not agree to any divorce.’

‘Why are you being so unreasonable?’ she demanded, her own temper rising back up. ‘You’re still going to get what you want. You’re still going to be a father.’

His hands slid off her shoulders and balled into fists. ‘Why are you doing this?’

Because I love you. And I know you will never fall in love with me. And to continue living with you knowing I will never have your love will eventually destroy me just as it destroyed your mother and my father. But not to their extent. Never to their extent. Our child will never suffer for it, I swear.

But the words went unsaid. If she thought for a second there was a chance that in the future his feelings could develop as hers had, she would say them.

What kind of idiot fell in love with a man incapable of returning it?

Had she been fool enough to hope his feelings would change as hers had? No, she hadn’t been stupid enough to think that. But still she’d fallen for him.

‘What do you think the press are going to say when they learn our marriage barely lasted two months?’ he asked, his voice cold and terse.

‘Let them think and write what they like. I have finally grown an immunity to them.’ Three months ago, the thought of them crucifying her for the whole of Italy’s delectation had made her want to vomit. Now…let them write what they liked. The fear she had felt of the press since she’d been seventeen had gone. She didn’t know when it had happened, only that it had.

She was an adult. She controlled her life, not the press.

‘And what about when our child grows up and reads about it?’ he snarled.

‘Then we will tell our child the truth. There’s been enough lies.’

Every feature on his face was taut but his eyes were hard. ‘If you’re so determined to go, then go. Take the time to think. When you get back we can discuss this like rational adults and find a way to thrash out a marriage that suits us both.’

‘There’s no way thrashing anything out will change my mind. We’re over.’

He got back to his feet and strolled past her and into the spare room. His room. He’d never wanted to share hers. He shut the door behind him with a slam.

Blinking back tears which served no useful purpose other than to blind her, Alessandra scraped her hair into a tight ponytail, carried her suitcase into the living area and quickly gathered her work stuff together.

Dio, Dio, Dio, get me out of here before he comes back out. Please, before my strength deserts me and I throw myself at his feet and beg for his love.

She left the building and walked straight into a media scrum.

Dozens of paparazzi swarmed her, closing in, leaving her trapped between them and the door she had already closed.

‘Alessandra, when is the baby due?’

‘Alessandra, how do you feel about becoming a mother?’

‘Alessandra, was the baby planned?’

She never got the chance even to think of a response or a way to escape. The door behind her flew open with such force she lost her footing. Were it not for the strong arms there to catch her, she would surely have fallen. As it was, Christian gathered her to him, protecting her with his strength, and marched her and her luggage deftly through the mob and into the back of the waiting cab.

Her last glimpse of him was when he tapped the top of the car to indicate the driver should leave, turned on his heel and marched back through the swarm, parting it as if he were Moses and they were the Red Sea.

Christian poured himself another bourbon.

He should check himself into a hotel and out of Alessandra’s apartment. She’d spelt out in no uncertain terms that this was her home. Not theirs. His homes weren’t enough for her.

He wasn’t enough.

Did it really matter if they divorced? He’d still have his legal rights with regard to their baby. He would still be a father. Alessandra would never deny him access; that he knew with as deep a certainty as he knew anything. She would do the right thing by all of them.

So why did it feel as if his world had toppled upside down?

And why did he feel so full and nauseous?

He finished his drink and poured another. The bottle was now empty.

Yes. Time to leave.

The freedom and space he’d always cherished so much but had gladly sacrificed for his unborn baby was his again to do with as he pleased.

Under normal circumstances he would hunt down Rocco, Stefan or Zayed and talk them into a night out. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Not for any of them. Rocco would sooner spit on him than see him. Stefan had recently shocked them all by marrying Clio—he hadn’t seen that coming—while Zayed was spending increasing time in Gazbiyaa, preparing to take over the throne.

All their lives were changing.

He went to grab his briefcase, which he’d left by Alessandra’s corner office. Instead of picking it up and leaving, he found himself sitting at her desk, flipping through the portfolios of her work.

As much as he admired all her work, it was their wedding album he spent the most time looking through. These were the unofficial ones taken by Alessandra, a timeline from the start of their wedding week, when their first guests had arrived, right up to the moment they’d got on the dance floor for the Kalamatianos. His lips quirked to see a picture of a particularly beautiful but notoriously moody actress smiling for the camera with something black in her teeth.

His heart jolted when he turned the page over to find a montage of photos of the same face. All different angles, all different moods: some smiling, others distant, a couple frowning… One in particular held his attention. The face was staring directly into the camera, a wide, relaxed grin on the face, a soft yet suggestive look in the eyes, as if the person wanted nothing more than to take the photographer to a private room and make love to them.

Not have sex.

Make love.

The subject of the photographs was him.

Christian pulled up outside Villa Mondelli. Turning off the engine, he stared at it in the same way he had stared at it as a poor eighteen-year-old boy on the cusp of becoming a man. He’d seen lavish splendour before, had walked past the mansions in the most affluent parts of Athens vowing that, one day, he too would live in a home like these. Villa Mondelli was the first of that particular type he’d actually been invited into. Not only invited to cross the threshold but to stay there for a week—and many more weeks later on throughout his life, but of course at the time he wasn’t to know that. The Mondellis had welcomed him, Stefan and Zayed into their home and treated him as if he were their equal, as if he were more than a dirt-poor gutter rat raised by a single woman with callused hands.

Now, fourteen years later, with homes every bit as opulent as the villa and wealth beyond his dreams, he still felt that same tug in his heart. But this tug was for Alessandra.

When he’d first visited he’d been full of envy for the people who lived there, brought up with such easy wealth. Or so it had seemed to his eyes.

Alessandra had lived in this house almost her whole life, brought here when her father had lost his own house and abdicated responsibility for his children onto his own father. Alessandra had been a baby. She’d grown up feeling responsible for her mother’s death, shunned by her father and raised by an often austere man who’d thought his child-rearing days long finished with. Her only source of love had been her older brother whom, despite all her grumbles at his interfering, she worshipped. For much of Alessandra’s life in this home, that same brother had been absent, away in the US studying, graduating to become a workaholic.

More often than not, her only company in this vast house were the staff, people sharing a roof with her because they were paid to.

All the envy he’d felt fourteen years ago had gone, replaced with the sad knowledge that even the richest of people could lead the poorest of lives.

Look at him. He, Christian Markos, was now regarded as one of the richest men in the world. He had all the wealth and all the trappings such wealth brought, but in his heart he was still poor.

It was only now, at the age of thirty-two, that he’d discovered the path to true richness.

He hadn’t even placed a foot on the bottom step when Rocco answered the door.

Christian looked up at him. ‘I’m here to see Alessandra.’ He hadn’t seen her in a fortnight. They’d exchanged a couple of text messages. She’d agreed to meet him in Milan for her next obstetrician appointment, but until then she wanted some space.

He’d needed space too, to get his head together. To get his heart together.

Rocco looked him up and down. ‘And what if she doesn’t want to see you?’

‘Has she said that?’ A puff of relief escaped from him. His hunch had been right. For all Alessandra’s proclamations that she’d rather live in a convent than stay with her brother, this was the first place Christian had looked when she’d failed to return to her apartment after her Tokyo trip.

He’d been there waiting for her.

A long pause. ‘No. She doesn’t need to.’ Rocco made no effort to move.

‘Either let me in or I let myself in.’

Now Rocco’s face did show some animation, a snarl flitting over it. ‘You enter my home when I say you do.’

Christian had had enough. He was there to see his wife, not debase himself by getting into a fight with his brother-in-law. Raising himself to his full height, he climbed the steps and stood eye to eye with him. ‘I know Alessandra is your sister but she is my wife and the baby she is carrying in her womb is mine—mine—and I will fight with every breath in my body to protect them. I am going to see her whether you like it or not, so, are you going to let me the easy way or the hard way?’

He couldn’t believe it had come to this, two old friends squaring up to each other. If he wasn’t so heartsick about his wife there would be some room in his heart to mourn the death of a friendship he’d valued so highly and had hoped, until this precise moment, could one day be mended.

To his surprise, Rocco’s stance relaxed a fraction. He looked him over, nodding slowly, his eyes thawing. ‘She’s in the summer room.’

Christian waited for the catch. When no catch seemed forthcoming, he headed off in the direction he remembered.

‘Memento vivere,’ Rocco called out.

The words made him pause in his tracks. He turned his head and supplied, ‘Remember to live.’

Finally a smile attached itself to Rocco’s face. ‘The best life to live is with the woman you love, si?’

He agreed with a nod. ‘Living without the woman you love is no life.’

Rocco laughed. ‘My sister is going to run rings around you.’

‘She already is.’ As quickly as Christian’s cheeks raised up into a quick grin, he felt a fragmented piece of him reattach itself.

Now to find his wife and see if all the other broken pieces could be fixed too.

He found her curled up on the daybed, a cross between a chaise longue and a sofa, reading a glossy magazine. Beneath the simple black dress she wore, he could see the definite rounding of her belly, safely protecting their baby in its confines.

He would give his life to keep Alessandra and their baby safe from harm.

She glanced up, her eyes widening to see him there. ‘Christian.’ Her voice sounded hoarse. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to bring you home.’

She raised a brow. ‘Home?’

‘Home. With me. Where you belong.’

Sighing, she put the magazine down and swung her legs round, dipping her head. ‘I told you I wanted some space.’ Her words were muffled behind the sheath of her hair that had fallen in front of her face.

‘You’ve had enough space from me to last you forever.’

‘Nothing’s changed…’

‘Everything’s changed.’ Crouching down on his haunches before her, he gently swiped her hair away and placed a finger under her chin.

Her gaze met his for a brief moment, honeyed eyes wide with pain.

‘Answer me one question. Do you love me?’

‘Are you trying to humiliate me? Is that why you’ve come here?’

‘I found the pictures you took of me.’

Her mouth curled in bitterness. ‘Then you already know the answer.’

‘I want to hear it from your lips.’

‘Why? Let me have some dignity, please.’

‘Because I’ve never heard the words before.’

A glimmer of shock passed over her. She sat up straight and looked at him—really looked at him. ‘Never?’

‘Never.’ Not from his mother. Not from any of the scores of women he’d had throughout the years, which wasn’t surprising, considering he would leave before the beds had cooled. ‘Please, agapi mou, if the words are true then say them.’

She’d lost so much colour he feared she would faint. But that was not Alessandra’s style. This was not a woman who wilted under pressure. Her lips clamped together, her eyes brimming with tears, he watched her fight to stop from falling.

‘Shall I make it easy for you?’ he said quietly. ‘How about if I were to tell you that I love you? Would that make it easier for you to say the words?’

Her chest hitched as she gave a sharp nod, still not speaking.

‘I love you.’

One solitary tear did break free, trickling down her cheek. He wiped it with his thumb.

‘I’ve spent many hours these past couple of weeks looking at those photos you took of me. You see something in me no one else can. The thing I never wanted you or anyone to see.’

‘What thing?’ she whispered.

‘The man inside. The gutter rat who grew up feeling dirty and unworthy and unlovable.’

‘You’re not…’

He placed a finger to her lips, though the sound of her outrage warmed the coldness inside him. ‘I’ve been fighting to stop you getting too close since before our wedding night because I knew you were so near to seeing what’s inside me. I thought it would repel you as it does my mother. I knew when you spoke of love in our apartment what you were trying to tell me, but I refused to listen. I didn’t think I deserved your love. I was scared that to fall in love with you would be to destroy you—and you, Alessandra Mondelli, whom I so wish would be Alessandra Markos, are the most precious person in the world to me. Without you, I am nothing. I accept that I’m not good enough for you…’

‘Will you stop saying that?’ She dug her nails into his skin. ‘You are not a gutter rat. You are…everything. Everything you’ve achieved with your life, everything you’ve done… If anyone’s undeserving, it’s me.’

‘To me, you are a princess. You deserve all the richness this world can bring, agapi mou, and I will do everything in my power to give it to you—if you’ll let me. I love you and I don’t want to live another day without you.’

Alessandra felt a whoosh of air leave her body. He loved her?

He loved her?

He loved her!

He placed her hands to his chest. She could feel his heartbeat thrumming wildly beneath his shirt. ‘I thought I could compartmentalise our marriage in the same way I compartmentalise my relationship with my mother. She lives in a corner of my life, safely hidden away from everyone so she cannot hurt me or anyone else. I told myself I would marry you to become a father and not a husband but I was wrong—I wanted you as much as the baby and was desperate to make you mine. I tried to compartmentalise you, not because I was scared of hurting you, but because deep down I knew you had the power to hurt me.’

‘I have the power to hurt you?’ she whispered, gazing at the man she loved so much.

‘More than you could ever know. Throughout my childhood I wanted nothing more than to make my mother proud and for her to love me. The power she had over me, the power to hurt me… I swore no one else would ever have that power. But then you came into my life and nestled straight into my heart and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I used to fear that falling in love with someone would curse them, make them turn into her. But you could never be like her. She took her heartbreak and bitterness out on me. You would never do that to our child. There hasn’t been anyone else since that first night we had and I know there never will be. Only you.’

He brushed a thumb over her lips. ‘I was desperate for you to sell your apartment, not because I thought it made sense in any way but because I felt excluded from it.’ He allowed himself a crooked smile. ‘I was jealous of an apartment.’

She leaned forward and rubbed the tip of her nose to his, unable to believe this was really happening.

From feeling as if she would never feel the sun on her face again she could feel its beams spread through her.

He loved her!

‘I was also afraid that if you had a bolt hole to escape to you would be more tempted to use it,’ he continued. ‘I should have guessed you would use this place as your bolt hole.’

‘I couldn’t face being in the apartment without you,’ she confessed. ‘So I turned up at Rocco’s door claiming asylum.’

He laughed. ‘He must have been delighted to know we’d fallen apart.’

‘No,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘When he realised I was actually in love with you, the chip he’d been carrying went. He became my brother again.’

His lips were so close to hers. She craned her neck forward, suddenly desperate to feel them upon her, to be cradled in his embrace but he gripped her neck at the side, gently but with enough firmness to stop her moving.

‘So, you do love me?’ For the first time she saw his vulnerability.

‘Yes. I love you. With everything I have.’

She’d hardly finished speaking before his mouth crushed hers, his essence filling her with such sweetness the tears really did fall.

‘Oh, my love,’ he said, wiping her tears away. ‘I never want to see you cry.’

‘They’re happy tears,’ she said with a sniff. ‘You’re not the only one who’s always felt unworthy—I’ve spent my whole life feeling like a poisoned chalice, put on Earth to destroy anyone who gets close to me.’ She stroked his cheek. ‘I wanted you to employ Kerstin because I thought she was the perfect woman for you.’

Incredulity spread over his face. ‘You were trying to engineer me being with her?’

‘I thought she could make you happy. You wouldn’t have to compromise your time or sacrifice…’

Her words were cut off by a hard, possessive kiss.

‘You’re perfect for me,’ he said when he pulled away, cradling her cheeks to gaze into her eyes. ‘Just you. We’ve both made sacrifices. I would make them again a thousand times over.’ He bowed his head and brushed his lips against hers. ‘I love you. You’re my world.’

‘And you’re my everything,’ she answered softly.

For the first time Alessandra felt a tinge of sympathy for her father, who had gone so off the rails when he’d lost the love of his life. After a fortnight without Christian, she had a little insight into what he must have gone through. She would never be able to forgive him, not for the way his actions had so hurt Rocco—and they had hurt her brother more than her because Rocco remembered a time when their father was a loving man who had adored his small family—but a whole chunk of the bitterness she felt towards him fell away.

‘I love you, Christian.’

‘Always.’

‘Always.’

And they did.

EPILOGUE

‘IT’S A GIRL!’

Alessandra didn’t know who was the most excited at the giving of the news—the obstetrician or her husband, who announced it in unison while the midwife held the baby—her daughter—up for a few brief seconds before the cord was cut and they whisked her away to clean her up

Christian was back at the top of the table, bed or whatever it was she was laid upon, raining kisses all over her face, muttering prayers and thanks in Greek, English, Japanese, Cantonese and any other language he could conjure.

‘You are wonderful,’ he said into her ear in a reverential fashion.

‘You’re pretty wonderful yourself.’ She laughed, stroking his hair.

It felt good to laugh.

It felt even better when they placed her daughter on her, allowing a little skin-on-skin time before whisking her back off for swaddling.

‘Look in my bag,’ she whispered.

‘Why?’

‘Just look. There’s an envelope in the side pocket.’

Doing as he was bid, Christian tore the envelope open and studied the document inside.

After long moments he faced her, his eyes brimming with so much emotion it was like looking into an overflowing bucket.

‘Thank you, Kiria Markos.’

‘You’re welcome Kyrios Markos.’

It was a document making official Alessandra’s name change from Mondelli to Markos.

This was her gift to him, her statement to them both as much as to the world that they were a unit. Their love was for keeps. Cut one and both would bleed. Their baby made them a family. She wanted their little family all to have the same name.

‘There is one little problem.’

‘Oh?’

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out an envelope.

Inside was a document making official Christian’s name from Markos to Mondelli.

Thus, when their swaddled baby was handed to them properly to begin their journey as a family, the first thing their daughter heard was the sound of her parents’ laughter.

As beginnings went, it couldn’t be bettered.

‘Three, two, one, drink!’

In unison, Christian and Rocco raised their glasses to their mouths and downed their shots.

‘To Letizia Markos,’ said Rocco, picking up his next shot.

‘To my beautiful baby,’ Christian agreed. ‘And to my beautiful wife.’

‘Three, two, one, drink!’

Christian had already celebrated the birth of his baby with Rocco, Zayed and Stefan four months before.

Tonight it was Alessandra’s turn. She was having her own version of wetting the baby’s head in the bar next door with her sister-in-law and some other friends. He suspected theirs would be a much more civilised affair than his had been. But not by much.

Thinking about it, he realised Alessandra hadn’t drunk any alcohol for well over a year, what with the pregnancy and then the four months of breast-feeding she’d done.

Her tolerance would be minimal.

Theos, and she’d insisted on wearing her five-inch heels.

He was all set to bolt out of the bar and hover over her like her own personal guard when Rocco called the barman over for another round.

‘Now we need to drink to baby Mondelli,’ Rocco said with a knowing look.

‘Baby Mondelli?’ It took a moment for the penny to drop. ‘Olivia, she is…?’

Rocco couldn’t hide the beam on his face. ‘Yes. I’m going to be a father.’

‘That is wonderful news!’ Embracing in a manly fashion, the two men then downed their final shots, got to their feet, walked out of the bar and into the next one, both eager to be with the women they loved above all else.

Bought for Her Innocence

Tara Pammi

CHAPTER ONE

“I HAVE A proposition for you, Jasmine, that would allow you to pay off your brother’s debt within a year.”

Fear was a cold fist clamped over her spine, but Jasmine Douglas forced herself to stare steadily into the chilly green eyes of Noah King.

That word proposition from any other man of her acquaintance, while wholly unwelcome but an awful reality of her life, was something she was used to.

The clientele of the club where she worked, owned by Noah, was constantly under the impression that her scantily clad, gyrating-around-a-pole body was up for sale. That she was for sale.

She wasn’t and never would be.

Only soul-wrenching fear of the consequences of owing a debt to this man who owned three underground gambling clubs in London, and who was even now contemplating her future without blinking, had forced her into it.

She had barely buried her brother Andrew when she had learned of the debt he had piled up with Noah King, of all people. Desperation to resolve this debt and a need for survival forced her every night to take the stage.

So coming from Noah, that dangerous word turned the very blood in her veins into ice. “I’ve not missed a single payment, Noah,” she finally said through a dry mouth.

“Yes, but you’re barely making a dent. You have no assets that you could sell off, either.”

Her skin turned cold in the comfortably warm warehouse that was the headquarters of Noah’s empire. A couple of completely harmless-looking men had showed up at her flat this morning and very politely accompanied her to see Noah here.

Sweat pooling over her neck, Jasmine realized how foolish she was to assume that anything related to Noah King was harmless.

“Am I a prisoner, then?” she said, before she could hold back the reckless question.

Noah didn’t even blink as he casually peeled an orange and offered her some. “Until we find a satisfactory resolution, yes.”

Her gut dropped and she fought the instinct to turn around and run. No phrase had ever scared the daylights out of her like satisfactory resolution.

Why, oh, why hadn’t Andrew thought of where his debt would lead him one day? How could he have left her to deal with this dangerous man?

How, after all the promises he had made to her, could he have left her even worse than they had already been?

She had slaved for five years and was still stuck in this man’s power, like a fly stuck in a spider’s web. The more she tried to get out, the more she was ensnared.

On the heels of that thought came instant guilt. Andrew’s face flashed in front of her, his eagerness shining in his eyes, his expression so kind, lodging a lump in her throat.

We’ll get out of this dump one day, Jas. You just wait and watch. I’ll get us out of here.

Her brother had only wanted what was best for her, had only wanted to improve their lot in life. Had watched out for her for years.

Equipped with no skills, saddled with their mother’s drinking and responsibility for Jas, he had seen no other way out of the hellhole they had been born into except by trying his luck in Noah’s gambling den.

Not his fault that he had died so suddenly at only twenty-nine in an accident. Not his fault that everyone they had counted on had disappointed them.

And just like that, as though he was a thorn forever lodged under her skin, like a memory that had been burned into her brain, Dmitri came to mind.

Dmitri Karegas—godson of Giannis Katrakis, textile tycoon and internationally renowned playboy, collector of expensive toys like yachts and Bugattis and…beautiful women.

Dmitri, who had grown up along with them on the streets of London after his English father’s business went into bankruptcy, whom Andrew had shielded from his alcoholic father numerous times, Dmitri, whom Andrew had treated like a brother, Dmitri, to whom Andrew had gone in need and who had refused to help an old friend while he led a filthy rich life, who had looked at her so coldly at Andrew’s funeral and offered her cash.

Dmitri, whose exploits she followed with something bordering on obsession.

Thinking of Andrew would only weaken her; thinking of the man who might have helped was definitely a certain waste of her energies now.

It was as if there was glass in her throat as she looked back at Noah. “How much do I owe?”

“Thirty thousand pounds. It would take you another decade to pay it off if you continue as you do. But if you added a little something more personal to your menu at the club, then I see this going somewhere. You’re a huge hit, Jasmine, and I’ve been getting offer after offer…”

Noah’s words came as if from a distance, as if it was happening to some other person, as if it was the only way her mind could deal with it… Sweat gathered over her forehead and the back of her neck, the pungent odor of alcohol and sweaty bodies that clung to the walls of the warehouse cutting off her breath.

The only thing that did burn into her mind was that she would be one step closer to selling herself, if not all the way. That was what Noah had decided for her. If she didn’t get out now, she never would.

But how? Her lungs burned with the effort to draw breath; her knees locked in utter fear.

“…unless someone offers to buy out your debt, you have no choice.” Noah’s words floated into her mind again.

That was it. That was all she needed—someone to pay off her debt, to buy her from Noah.

And that someone had to be Dmitri.

No, that ashamed part of her screamed. If she went to him for help, he would know how low she had fallen. He would…

Better to sell herself to a known devil than an unknown one, the rational part of her asserted.

But even Dmitri couldn’t just extract her from Noah King with all the power he had amassed. Not after he had turned his back on this life and everything in it.

Not if he had become a soft man who spent his days lounging about on his yacht and nights with women who did his every bidding.

Jasmine would have to provide Dmitri an opening and pray that he would take the bait. And if he didn’t, the consequences didn’t bear thinking about.

The article she had seen in the tech magazine that had been wrapped around the loaf of warm bread she had bought at the bakery only last week came to her. She had nothing to lose at this point and still, everything to gain.

“Put my virginity up for an auction,” she said loudly, the words burning her lips. “Give me a chance to pay it off at once.”

A deafening silence filled the hall. Jasmine could feel ten sets of eyes on her, her skin crawling at the obviously male interest in her. Steadily, she held Noah’s gaze, immensely grateful that at least his gaze was free of the openly nauseating lust she usually found herself the target of.

But then, Noah was, first and always, a businessman.

His silent appraisal of her gave Jasmine hope. Her breath ballooned up in her chest, crushing her lungs as she waited for his reply.

“You think someone will buy you,” he finally said, a greedy glint in his eye. She had caught his interest, she realized, a shaky relief filling her inside out.

“Yes,” she said, putting all her confidence in that single word. “Give me a week, Noah, please,” she added, desperation coating her throat.

“Three days,” Noah finally said.

A shake of his head had one of his thugs accompanying Jasmine to the room she had been brought to earlier.

For a second, Jasmine shook violently from head to toe, utter fear drenching her.

No, she couldn’t lose her nerve now.

Switching her prepaid cell phone on, Jasmine clicked the number she had memorized years ago on the clunky keys, every breath coming like a chore. It had been years; he wouldn’t probably have the same number anymore.

Even if he did have it, he might not care.

Pressing the cold phone to her forehead, Jasmine held back the hot sting of tears.

This had to work.

She backspaced a few times as her fingers shook on the phone screen. Her stomach tight, her hands clammy, she hit Send and crumpled against the floor.

In the process of putting his discarded shirt on, Dmitri Karegas flicked a glance toward the blonde provocatively stretched over his bed.

“Come back to bed,” she whispered without any fabricated coyness.

What was her name? Mandy? Maddie?

For the life of him, Dmitri couldn’t remember such a simple thing. And couldn’t manage any shame over it, either.

Work, party, sex—these were the parameters of his life. He didn’t hate women, didn’t remember deciding to make his life so. But there it was.

He had worked around the clock for the past two months, trying to undo the damage his business partner and oldest friend, Stavros, had wreaked on Katrakis Textiles’ stock with his uncharacteristic behavior, and finalizing a coup that had finally landed a nightclub he had been dying to acquire on his portfolio.

So he had found the blonde at the nightclub on his first night looking over his new toy.

She was everything he liked in a woman—willing, wanton, with a wicked tongue to boot. Even better, she didn’t fill the silence with inane chatter and hadn’t even dropped those usual hints about a budding relationship.

One creamy thigh bared as she slid upward in the bed. Yet as her rose-colored nipples puckered into tight buds under his continued stare, all he felt was an echo of arousal, the way a dog would lift its muzzle at the scent of meat.

Nothing else. Just like the numerous times over the past decade.

He worked, he collected his toys, he slept with willing women, yet somehow Dmitri never felt anything but a surface reaction, as if he was skimming through the very edge of life, incapable of sinking beneath the surface, forever on the outsides of it.

As if what he had turned off all those years ago to live through another day could never be turned on again. Even when he had helped Anya, who had become a sort of a friend, it had been a shallow echo of a different reality, another life where he had saved his mother that night.

Laughter, gravelly and as shocking as if a mountain rose in the midst of the sea, reached his ears, cutting off his unnerving reverie.

It was the afternoon that Leah had invited Stavros and herself to lunch aboard his yacht.

Looking around, he found his jeans and pulled them on.

He had always liked his godfather’s granddaughter. But ever since Leah and Stavros had found their way to each other, which he had been damn glad about because all the drama around their marriage had caused the Katrakis Textiles’ stock to sink, he had begun finding it distinctly uneasy to be in their company.

He knew what the source of that unease was but he was damned if he gave it voice. Neither did he feel up to the disapproving glance that would come from Stavros.

Even though he was only older by three years, Stavros treated him as if Dmitri was still the sixteen-year-old thug that their godfather Giannis had brought to his estate.

“Leave as soon as you can,” he told the woman without meeting her gaze.

As soon as he stepped on the upper deck, Leah pulled away from Stavros and gave him a loose hug. “It’s good to see you, Dmitri.”

The familiar warmth of her slender body chased a sudden shiver through him, as shocking as if a cavern of emotion had opened up amongst the emptiness. Something must have flickered in his face because Stavros studied him closely.

Ever since Stavros had accepted that he was in love with Leah, after years of scorning Dmitri for what he called his reckless, hedonistic lifestyle, Stavros knew how empty Dmitri felt inside.

“I liked you better before,” he said roughly, warning Stavros away.

Leah looked between them, frowning. “What?”

“Nothing,” Stavros delivered in a flat tone. The knot of his gut relented a little and Dmitri breathed easy, slipping into the mode of that reckless playboy that was bone-deep now.

He pulled a chair for Leah and signaled to his staff to serve lunch. Pulling on a practiced smile, he looked at Leah. “So what has prompted you two to emerge from your love nest a week before the wedding?”

Leah sighed. “I would like for you to give me away at the wedding. Giannis is not here and you mean a lot to me, Dmitri.”

“How many more times do I have to give you away?” he teased while intensely glad that she had asked him.

Her gaze twinkling, Leah grabbed Stavros’s hand and laced her fingers through his. “Just this one more time.”

After years of shouldering duty and knowing nothing but rules, Stavros had finally found a measure of happiness with Leah.

Holding Stavros’s gaze, because he would die rather than betray anything else that he might be feeling to his friend, Dmitri said, “It will be my pleasure, Leah.”

The sharp chime of his cell phone drew his attention. Frowning at the strange number, he clicked it.

I need help, Dmitri. Call Noah and find out. Do this for Andrew.

A cold nail raking over his spine, Dmitri stared at the message.

Images and sensations—his father’s drunken rages, his mother’s tired face, his own powerlessness, stinking alleys filled with Dumpsters, fistfights and broken noses, sobbing when Andrew held him hard, and a girl with huge, dark eyes in her oval face…

Jasmine…

Christos, the message is from Jasmine.

His gut clenched so hard that he pushed at the table and stood with a growl, a violence of emotion he hadn’t known in years holding him in its feral grip.

Noah… Noah King… The man who ruled over the lowlifes of London like a king ran his empire… Lending and extortion, bars and nightclubs, pimps and prostitution, there was no pie that Noah didn’t have a finger in.

And Jasmine was caught in it.

A soft hand on his arm brought him back from the pounding fury… He turned to see Leah staring at him with such shock that his breath burst into him in a wild rush.

On his other side stood Stavros, his gaze filled with concern. “Dmitri, who was that text from?”

“Jasmine.” Even saying her name sent a pulse of something through Dmitri. As if he was opening a door he had closed on the worst night of his life. As if he was suddenly a spiraling vortex of emotion instead of empty inside.

“Jasmine, as in Andrew’s sister?” Stavros’s understanding was instant.

“Yes, she is in trouble,” he replied, running his hand through his hair.

His muscles pumped with the need for action; he wanted to smash something, he…

“Dmitri, let’s discuss what needs to be done,” Stavros interjected calmly, as if aware of how raw he felt. Of course, his friend knew.

He opened the message and read it again. He had thought Jasmine better off without his interest and instead, she had been right there in that veritable hell all these years.

How? How was Jasmine in trouble with Noah King? What had Andrew done?

Instructing Stavros to wait, he made a series of calls, pulling every contact he had made during his life on the streets of London.

In twenty minutes, he had the gist of the situation, and it sent his sanity reeling.

Noah King had set Jasmine’s virginity up for an auction and she was texting for help.

If he hadn’t spent the first fifteen years of his life in that pit, he wouldn’t have believed it. The thing that burned him, though, was that she didn’t ask for help. Not even now.

Instead, she’d reminded him that he owed Andrew for the countless times he had saved Dmitri from his alcoholic father’s rages and then from any number of fistfights that could have killed him.

Did she think he wouldn’t come unless it was to pay off a debt?

Shoving away the infernal questions, he turned to Stavros. “I…need as much cash as we can drum up instantly, upward of a hundred thousand pounds at least.”

Stavros didn’t even hesitate before he called their accountant. “Anything else?” he asked after he had finished.

“You’re the only one I trust. If this goes sideways, I want you to…take care of Jasmine.”

Stavros didn’t even try to stop him, only nodded. He had taught Dmitri what it meant to do his duty.

Maybe this was his chance to start afresh. Maybe he would have his own freedom from the guilt and emptiness that had plagued him for more than a decade once he’d set Jasmine free.

Jasmine was startled awake from a fitful sleep by the soft creaking of the door. Adrenaline deluged her and she choked down on the scream building in her chest. Slowly, she reached for the knife and sat up toward the edge of the bed. She wasn’t going to leave her safety to chance.

Thankfully, the bed was in the darkest part of the room.

Noah, for all the ruthless chill in his eyes, wouldn’t lay a finger on her. But John, his younger brother… She had seen that lust in his eyes every time she had run into him at the club.

She would have only one chance at striking out and she intended to take it without fail. She didn’t wonder if there was a chance to escape or if Noah would rip into her for attacking his brother.

All she cared in that moment was that no one pinned her on that bed, that no one touched her.

Footsteps that were as light as her own treaded the cheap linoleum floor and she waited, crouching.

The moment the faint shadow moved, she attacked soundlessly. Her knife sliced through the air and scratched at something before she was plucked off the bed as if she was a feather.

She lashed out with her fists and legs, her screams choked by a rough hand that found her mouth effortlessly.

Her struggle lasted all of two seconds. She was grabbed and hauled against a hard body, knocking the breath out of her while a viselike arm clamped around her middle.

“Stop struggling or I will walk out and not look back.”

Mindless with fear, Jasmine dug her teeth into the hard palm, squeezing and pushing against the steel cage that clamped her.

The hold against her waist tightened, long fingers pressing into her belly and almost grazing the underside of her breasts.

But John’s body wasn’t honed to steel like the one holding her was, the thought pulsed through the fear. John was fleshy, round. John was… The body that held her tight was all hard muscles and sharp angles, the scent that filled her nostrils not of sweat and other body fluids but clean with a touch of water to it.

Like the ocean breeze. And only one man she knew had that intoxicating scent that had muddled her senses the last time, too.

She had been drowning in grief at Andrew’s funeral, and the sight of him, all stunning and sophisticated and so different, that crisp scent of him as he had neared her had sent her on a tailspin.

“Dmitri?” she whispered, every hope, every breath hinged in that name, her pulse fluttering so fast that it whooshed in her ears.

The tightness of his hold relented, a sudden shift in the hardness that encased her. His breath landed on the rim of her ear, tickling her. “At your service, Jasmine.”

Relief came at her in shuddering waves, her lungs expanding, her throat thick with pent-up fear.

Long fingers moved up and down her arms, stroking her. “Breathe, pethi mou.”

A streak of longing rent through her at the endearment, tearing at the hardened chunk of self-imposed loneliness that was her core. God, she hadn’t been held like that in forever.

“You came,” she whispered, feeling light-headed and shivery.

“Your faith in me will bloat my ego.” Silky smooth and dripping with sarcasm, his words were a whiplash against her fading willpower.

Anchoring her fingers on his forearms, she forced her spine to straighten. “From everything I hear about you,” she said, her relief fading with a welcome burn of anger and grief she had nursed for the past few years, “your ego, among other things, is apparently already big enough.”

Waves of his laughter enveloped her. His mouth opened in a smile against her jaw, sending a burst of such shocking heat through her nerves. She didn’t dare turn and glance at him, for fear of combusting alive on the spot.

Why was she reacting like this to him? Was it shock?

“John’s lying outside—”

She tried to jerk away from him. “God, you killed him?”

Another lethal smile flashed at her. “I promised my godfather I wouldn’t waste the life he gave me.”

“Nice to know you keep some of your promises.”

“And then there is Stavros,” he continued smoothly, ignoring her ungrateful little remark, “whose wedding is in a week, and he would not appreciate being dragged into my mess.” He sighed. “So tempted as I was, I didn’t kill him. I don’t even use my fists anymore except to hit Stavros,” he added. “And believe me, if that isn’t exercising self-control, I don’t know what is.”

Jasmine had no idea if he was serious or joking. The fact that he had answered her request for help, even though it was what she had fervently prayed for, hit her hard now.

Was it because she hadn’t expected the infamous playboy to come himself? Because she had relentlessly, and a little obsessively, hoped that the soft lifestyle had softened him?

Had somehow made him less?

Instead, the body that encased her felt as if it was made of steel. Realizing that she was leaning into him, she threw her elbow out.

His breath hissed out of him. “Now that we have finished our introductions, are you ready to leave this dump?”

“Dmitri…why did you attack John? Why’re you here in the middle of the night?”

Darkness shadowed his face, the fluorescent light caressing his face here and there. The light gray of his eyes was the only thing she could see. And in one glimpse, they burned with such ferocity that Jasmine dropped her gaze. “I hit him because I remembered how much of a bully John was and because he was sniffing around outside your door. And I’m here at midnight because I don’t trust Noah not to up the ante by morning—”

One question burned on her lips. “Did you…pay off the debt, Dmitri?”

“I didn’t just pay off the debt, Jasmine. I won the—” he slipped into Greek and Jasmine had no interest in learning what the pithy word was “—auction. Now stop acting the damsel in distress and move, thee mou.”

The endearment, echoing with mockery, lanced at her. “I’m not a damsel, neither am I naive enough to assume that you’re a white knight.”

The second her words left her, she wanted to snatch them back.

His teeth gleamed in the dark. “It heartens me to know that you know the score. I’m no white knight, neither will I risk loss of limb to save your hide.”

“No?”

“No. But you already know that. What did you call me at Andrew’s funeral—a self-serving bastard who doesn’t know the meaning of honor or loyalty? Throwing some money at Noah to buy you is one thing. But my generosity doesn’t stretch far enough to risk myself. So how about we postpone our chat?”

The dark of dawn cloaked them as they exited into the street. A gasp left her as she saw the sleek Bugatti motorcycle tucked neatly out of sight.

So what the dirty rags reported about his lifestyle was true. Bugatti bikes, and a yacht and countless women—Dmitri Karegas finally had everything he had ever wanted.

And he hadn’t lifted even a finger to help Andrew.

I have asked Dmitri for help and he cut me off, Jas. He’s not the boy we knew once. Andrew’s words resonated in her head, building a fire of hatred in her gut. But he had helped her today, the sensible part of her piped up.

“You’re staring at it as if it were a viper that would strike you.”

Feeling the intensity of his perusal, she shook her head.

It didn’t matter what Dmitri had become. It couldn’t matter to her.

He was an old friend who happened to have enough money to bail her out of a sticky situation. She would pay him back, even if it meant she would have to go hungry half the time, and they would be through with each other and that would be that.

“Jasmine?” Dmitri probed softly.

Cold October wind pressed against the exposed skin at her neck, sinking and seeping into her flesh. The worn-out sweatshirt she had pulled on last night offered meager protection. Her muscles shivered at the biting cold.

He chucked off his leather jacket. And held it out to her.

Her hands wrapped around herself to ward off the cold, she stared back at him.

“I don’t need it…” Her teeth chattered right in the middle of her sentence. Bloody traitorous body! “I’m fine,” she finished lamely.

He said nothing, his hand still stretched out toward her.

The silence between them stretched, sharply contrasted by the growing traffic around them. He pushed the helmet down onto his head. Though his face was hidden by the visor, Jasmine could feel the thread of his fury beneath it.

His very stillness in the wake of it was disconcerting and she marveled at his control.

Why? Why was he so angry with her? Why couldn’t he take the damn helmet off so that she could properly look at him, so that she could at least guess his thoughts?

She must still be under shock after the past few days because somehow the latter mattered more to her than his anger.

She wanted to see those solemn gray eyes; she wanted to see that broken blade of his nose, the tender smile that had always curved his mouth just for her. The strength of how fiercely she wanted to feel those arms around her once again… It was insanity.

More than anything, she wanted to see how much he’d changed from the sixteen-year-old who had left with his wealthy godfather.

From as far back as she could remember, Dmitri had been rough, almost violent, got into every fight he could manage. Only Andrew had been able to calm him, reach him at a level that no one could.

His mother’s death did that to him was all her brother would say when she probed. She remembered how fiercely Dmitri had fought against leaving with his godfather. It had taken Andrew countless hours to convince him.

But once he’d left, Dmitri hadn’t looked back. Not once.

He had easily forsaken Andrew and all the promises he’d made, had become the überwealthy playboy who cared nothing for those he had left behind.

And then he’d started appearing in the gossip columns, his wild parties, expensive toys and the countless women he dated—dated being a euphemism—making him infamous. One time, he had even come close to marrying a Russian supermodel.

In short, his life now was spheres away from hers.

“Before you read something into this—” she sensed his sardonic smile rather than seeing it “—it’s like putting a tarp on my Ferrari or a fresh coat of paint on my yacht, Jasmine. It’s about protecting my possessions.”

A gasp escaped her at how effortlessly cruel he was. “I still don’t want it.”

“Fine, freeze to your death, then.”

He pushed the helmet over her head. With precise movements, he tugged the ends of the strap together tight around her chin. Jasmine jerked at the touch of his long fingers against her jaw and cheeks, a searing heat stroking her skin. The click of the strap reverberated in tune with the thud of her heart.

“I don’t need—”

“I’m very possessive of all my toys.”

She slapped his hand away from her chin, her rising temper drowning out the confusion. With movements as measured as she could make them, she got on the bike.

“I’m not a bloody toy that you acquired. You’re just as bad as the lot of them.”

Her words got cut off as the bike started with a sleek purr, pulled off like a cannon and the momentum almost threw her off the backseat.

The very real risk of flying off the bike claiming her, Jasmine held on to his shoulders, taking care to not touch him more than necessary.

A distinct sense of unease settled between her shoulder blades. What had she risked by trusting a man who had no loyalty, who thought his roots were nothing but a dirty stain that had to be removed?

CHAPTER TWO

THROUGH LITTERED STREETS and narrow alleys, Dmitri drove on and on, feeling as if the very devil was on his heels.

Usually, he felt as if he was the king of the world as the sleek machine responded to his every request, purred into a beauty of motion. Usually, he found escape from the emptiness in his gut when he drove his bike or when he took his yacht out onto the ocean.

With the wind whipping at him and the world going motionless around him, the pure throttling power of it had always calmed him.

He knew nothing of that calm now. A cascade of emotions and feelings deluged him, and it was as if he was still trying to breathe, trying to stay afloat.

It was going back to that neighborhood, he decided with a choked-back growl.

His life had been a veritable hell all those years ago and not for the reason that Stavros and Giannis assumed. Being there, he thought, would surely send him spiraling into that angry, violent teenager Giannis had suddenly found on his hands.

And it had.

That same anger and fear and shame had instantly corralled him the moment he had seen the familiarly grungy warehouse, smelled the nearby leather factory. The suffocating stench of his failure clung to his pores.

Like an invisible rope had loosened the tether he kept on the memories he locked away, like his skin could flinch and smart again from scars that had healed on the surface long ago.

He hadn’t felt this out of control since…since the night his mother had died. The road curved dangerously ahead and he throttled the gear, curving into it.

A tentative hand pressed into his shoulder, his name a soft whisper on the periphery of his roiling emotions. Jasmine’s slender body slammed into him from behind, her arms vining around his midriff like clinging ropes. Her mouth was near his ear and her terrified voice broke through the black shroud of past.

“Dmitri, please…slow down.”

Her soft entreaty finally punctured through him and he slowed.

Her hands wound around his waist snugly. She was plastered to his back from cheek to chest, and a sigh left her mouth. He clutched her hand at his waist and she pressed back silently. He didn’t know who sought comfort from whom, but there was something about her embrace that calmed the turmoil inside him.

That life was over, he reminded himself. Andrew was far beyond his help. His mother was far beyond his help.

He had nothing to recommend about himself to a woman, but he had oodles of money. And with it, he would ensure Jasmine never went back to that world, would set her up for the rest of her life and walk away.

They stopped finally after an hour, dawn streaking the sky a faint pink. Her muscles cramping at sitting so still and erect on the bike, Jasmine got off the bike shakily, her legs barely holding her up.

From a dingy, neon-lit back alley to the sophisticated elegance of The Chatsfield, London, it was as if she had fallen through a tear in the fabric of the city.

Chauffeured luxury vehicles rounded the courtyard even at this time, designer-clad men and women making their way to the entrance.

Her neck craned back, she took in the majestic building and then looked down at herself. Dressed in washed-out jeans and a thin, baggy sweater, she felt like a mangy dog that the liveried bellboy would shoo away any second.

With a masculine elegance, Dmitri got off the bike and handed the keys to an eagerly waiting, uniformed valet. He came to stand next to her and instantly, a storm of butterflies unleashed in her belly.

Heat crept up her chest as she remembered the restrained power in his leanly coiled body.

After years of dreaming about getting out of that life, the reality of it happening had hit her hard. Driven by a growing sense of freedom and fear at how fast he had been going, she had wrapped herself around him. She had only sought comfort in a distressing moment, and yet now it felt shameless and weak, smacking of a familiarity that she didn’t want him to think she presumed.

He hadn’t pushed her off the bike, so that had to count for something.

The frigid air that met her nostrils was coated with the scent of him, and somehow became the familiar anchor in a sea of strangeness.

“You should have told me where we were going,” she said, aware of the belligerence in her tone and not able to stop it.

She hated feeling as if she didn’t belong. And the sad truth of her life was that she belonged in that dingy alley rather than here. She belonged more in that club that catered to the most basic sins than in this posh elegance, with men like Noah and John rather than the man Dmitri had become.

He took her elbow and pulled her forward. “You don’t sound happy to be out of there.”

Keeping her gaze ahead, which was sure going to break her neck, she quipped, “More like not happy to be out here. I don’t want to go in there, Dmitri. I just need a few more minutes of your—”

“We’re going to need a lot more than a few minutes to sort things out, Jasmine. And if I can belong here,” he threw at her arrogantly, “then you can.”

“Sort out…what? Why?”

His long fingers dug into her flesh as if to jostle her. She pulled at his grip with her fingers but he didn’t relent. “You will not look at me. Why?”

She angled her head and caught a quick glimpse just to defy him.

Piercing gray eyes held hers in an open challenge and she turned away.

The doorman held out the door for them, a familiar smile on his face. Dmitri greeted him by name and Jasmine followed slowly. He had been so close all these years. And she had never known.

“You stay here regularly?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t realize you visited London anymore.”

“And you would know because you have kept in touch?” An impression of contained energy and a barely civil smile hit her. “Stavros prefers to look after the Athens side of the business.”

Entering the brilliantly lit lobby from the dark, hushed luxury of the outside was like stepping into a different world. Jasmine blinked and stared around, losing her bearings for a few minutes.

Black-and-white art deco flooring complemented soft beige walls while a stunning, magnificent chandelier took center stage in the vast space. Bold lines and sweeping curves made the hotel look timelessly elegant.

And Dmitri stood in the center of it all.

Black jeans and black leather jacket made him look effortlessly breathtaking, the long, lean lines of his body drawing looks from more than one woman even in the predawn hours.

He might have started where she did, but there was an aura of casual power and panache that made Dmitri not just blend, but stand out amidst the extravagant grandeur of the hotel.

At five-ten, she matched his six-three stride easily. She only wished she could say the same of her clothes and more important, her insides. The vast foyer felt as if it would take forever to cross and all she wanted to do was to fade away from the brilliant lights.

It was not that she thought herself plain. On the contrary, she had heard all her life, and felt nauseous, that she was exotic, lush, possessed of perfect voluptuousness for her vocation. She was stared at six nights of the week and earned her living making love to a pole, but it was how she felt next to the casual elegance of the man next to her that bothered her.

The shame that always clung to her, as if it was etched into her very skin, was amplified when she stood next to him. Just as it stung her that he had seen her at such a weak moment.

As if suddenly he was a measure of her looks, her world, her very life.

She flinched when he pulled her away from the reception area toward the bank of elevators. He held her loosely and yet a thread of his emotions, not so contained, brimmed within him.

Beneath that polite smile, she had a feeling he was ragingly furious. And she was afraid of finding out why.

“The hotel is fit for a king,” she said, trying to keep the utter awe she felt out of her words.

“I have a feeling that you’re the opposite of impressed.”

The doors of the lift closed with a soft ping, trapping them inside. Her heart beat like the thundering hooves of a horse when he hit the stop button.

“You have to look at me now, Jasmine” came his soft command.

“You’re making a big deal out of…”

“Are you afraid of me, thee mou?”

Shaking her head, she looked up.

The four walls of the lift were glittering mirrors that showed her a stunningly gorgeous face.

Her femininity, beaten down and stuffed into a bag, roared a primal scream of joy at the sight of the magnificent man in front of her. Every inch of her—from her skin to her breasts, from her cells to her core—stood to attention.

His legs crossed at the ankles, his hands gripping the wall behind him, he filled the space with his masculinity. Something else burst into life in that enclosed space, swelling and arching, until Jasmine felt as though there was a hum inside her every nerve.

Even at sixteen, he had had arresting features, but now…the power he exuded and his command of the world filled the planes and angles of his face, making him a lethal combination of stunning looks and effortless masculinity.

Long, curly lashes kissed cheekbones that were honed so sharp that it was like looking at the work of a master sculptor. Deep-set gray eyes studied her just as hungrily as she studied him. As if he knew her volatile reaction to his nearness.

Of course he knew, Jasmine scolded herself. There couldn’t be a man alive who looked like Dmitri and didn’t know it, didn’t wield it to his advantage. And the fact that she, too, with all the rules she had set in place to be able to face herself in the mirror, was staring at him with googly eyes, measuring herself against him… That woke up Jasmine like nothing else could.

Now she understood the sense of danger that had skittered through her very blood when he had held her from behind so intimately.

The danger to her didn’t come from him. The danger to her came from her reaction to him.

CHAPTER THREE

DECIDING THAT HE would protect her at any cost was one thing, Dmitri thought as Jasmine devoured him with those wide eyes.

The actual logistics of what he would do with this wild creature were quite another. With lush breasts and narrow hips that swayed with every step she took, from the way she tucked that tumbling jet-black hair behind her ear to the pouty mouth that came from no injection, Jasmine was not simply beautiful, but stunningly sexy.

Was that the reason for that ridiculous auction? Had some man coveted her because of those Arab genes that she had inherited from an absentee father, and Noah had turned it to his advantage? What horrific scheme had she caught herself in?

Round jet-black eyes, dark arched eyebrows that suited perfectly those big eyes, a sharp, bladelike nose and a pointed chin.

There was not an ounce of extra flesh on her face, giving her a lean, sharp look. As if every bone in that face had been sculpted by years of hunger and sleepless nights. Her hair, jet-black and thickly curling, was pulled back tightly, exaggerating the feral sharpness of her features. One curl dangled alongside a sharply defined jawline.

There was an alert look in her eyes even now, just as there had been in that warehouse. The straight, tense line of her shoulders, her sharp breaths… He realized how alien this was to her.

How alien he was to her…

When he had seen her five years ago, she had barely turned eighteen, and had looked nothing like this…except for that wary distrust.

It had been there then, too. But where she had barely glanced at him then, her bold gaze drank him in today.

He had never experienced such a thorough, artless appraisal. Women came on to him all the time and he enjoyed it, but Jasmine’s searing gaze was more than basic female curiosity.

It was as though she was looking for something, or someone. And instead of that shallow echo he was so used to, he felt something inside him vibrate in response to her look.

As if a part of him that had lain dormant and unfeeling for so long suddenly uncoiled itself at the sight of her. Dangerously tempting and thoroughly unwise… He wondered how to distance himself from it.

Because as hungry as he’d been to feel something like that, he had nothing to give her.

“No one would know you were from the streets,” she said with a brittleness that he wouldn’t have associated with her.

“And why do you sound as if that’s the worst thing in the world, Jasmine?” He would not call her Jas even though it fluttered on his tongue. Which was strange, because how could a woman’s name have so much power over him? “It’s a pit of desperation and addiction and violence. Why should I ever want to look as if I belonged there once? Why should anyone who had a chance to get out of there still cling to it?” Steel resonated in his voice at the end there but he couldn’t help it.

Her eyelashes fluttered, and he had a feeling she was trying to calm herself down. She failed. When she looked at him, she fairly bristled with aggressiveness. “Of course not. And God forbid anything stand in the way of you leaving the past behind, Dmitri, anything even remotely dirty and poor taint your extravagant lifestyle now.”

He pushed off the wall, furious energy burning through his veins. Instantly, she flattened herself against the wall. And the startled look in her eyes more than anything calmed him down.

Let her think what she wants, he told himself.

He had never cared what the world thought of him. Why would he care about what Jasmine said? But he couldn’t allow her to taunt him like that; he couldn’t allow her to think even for a second that she knew him.

He turned all the energy in him into cutting scorn, delivering it in a silky-smooth tone. “Before you castigate me for wanting out of that life, let’s not forget how this night started, thee mou. Let’s not forget whose money and power saved whose ass in this story, ne?

“Maybe you believe your life is not valuable enough to get out of there, but I will not feel guilty for thinking mine is. Nor will I feel guilty about enjoying the fruits of my hard labor. Giannis might have—”

“Pulled you out of the hellhole that was our life, but I know that it was you and your friend…”

“Stavros Sporades,” he added.

“That it was you two that put his textile company on the global map, especially when everything else is folding in this economy,” she added, as if she was offering him recompense for angering him. “I have followed your—” he had a feeling she wouldn’t say the actual word that she wanted to “—success the past few years.”

And suddenly, it was as though a hard fist jammed into his throat. She had known he was rich, then. She had known that he could have helped. Even as she refused to admit it, she had known, all along, that he would come if she asked.

And yet, she had waited so long… Which night would have made it too long?

Fury, reminding him of broken bones and painful fists, flew hot through him. “Have you? Gratifying to know that I held your interest for so many years, pethi mou. And a little shocking that you have somehow lost the good sense I thought you possessed.”

The lift opened just then and he walked out without checking to see if she followed.

By the time she walked past the dramatic reception hall into the sitting lounge of the suite, Jasmine felt numb to the extravagance of her surroundings.

It was a toss-up between the electricity that burned between Dmitri and her and the reach of his wealth and sphere.

A finely carved wood and marble fireplace dominated the lounge, which was decorated with black leather furniture.

Her running shoes sank into the thick carpet with a soft hiss.

Jasmine had barely caught her breath when a woman walked into the lounge. Her hair was mussed around her fragile, sleep-ruffled face, her long legs bared in shorts.

“Dmitri?” she whispered, her shocked glance taking in the both of them. “You took so long…”

“Leah? What are you doing here?” The concern in Dmitri’s voice was as unmistakable as the lacerating sarcasm when he addressed Jasmine.

Suddenly, being a spectator to a romantic reunion between Dmitri and his latest girlfriend was the last thing Jasmine wanted to be.

The woman crossed the last few steps, genuine worry etched on her brow. Dmitri enfolded her so gently that it sent a pang through Jasmine. “When you were taking so long, he dropped me off here. He’s been calling every fifteen minutes…” Her gasp pierced through Jasmine.

“Dmitri, you’re bleeding.” With that, Leah clicked her cell phone on and left the room.

The sharp hiss of his exhale, the way he had held himself so rigidly on the bike… Her gut heaving, Jasmine turned him around roughly and lifted his leather jacket.

A patch of red stained the tear on his pristine white shirt around his abdomen, a stark contrast against the rest of it.

Jasmine stared at the dried blood and the way the shirt clung to his skin. Bile filled her throat as the metallic scent washed over her. Shivers set forth from the base of her spine. As if her attacking Dmitri when he had come to save her was the last straw…

Pressing her hand to her forehead, she tried to breathe past the rawness in her throat. “I could have killed you… I thought John would sneak in in the middle of the night and I was just being cautious… I never…”

“I did not ask why you attacked me,” he said in that monotone voice again. He sounded angrier at her being upset than that she had wounded him. “Theos, I don’t care that you tried to protect yourself. I care that you have led a life that requires that you sleep with a knife under your pillow.”

She flinched at the disgust in his words.

For as long as she had known, men had only looked at her cheaply, with lust glimmering in their eyes. And once she had started working her current job four years ago, it had only gotten worse, shame and self-disgust her only companions.

So why the hell did she care what Dmitri thought of her?

His hand under her chin, he lifted it up. She clutched her eyes closed to lock away the tears. The depth of her reaction to him, his words scared her.

“Look at me, Jasmine.” Something rumbled in that soft command. She would have called it desperation if she thought she could hold together one sane thought at the moment.

His hands moved up and down her arms as if he was calming down a spooked animal. “You’re shaking again. Theos, stop being afraid of me.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she whispered, opening her eyes. Dark stubble surrounded that carved mouth. “I’m so sorry, Dmitri…”

He shook his head. “You grazed me really good with the serrated edge but it’s only a flesh wound.”

She ran a shaking finger over the mended bridge of his shattered nose, a tendril of desperate emotion engulfing her.

“I don’t remember ever being so terrified as that night when John punched you,” she said, remembering the horrific night when John had broken Dmitri’s nose. “I thought you would kill him.”

A haunting memory flashed through those deceptively calm eyes. “If not for Andrew, I would have.” A smile cut his mouth then, transforming his face again. It was like seeing someone intensely familiar slip on a mask and become a stranger. “For a woman who defends that filthy world, you’re acting strange at the sight of a little blood.”

Her finger moved down his nose, hovered over his mouth, her heart thundering in her chest.

“Jas…” Her name was a raw warning on his lips.

An immense stillness seemed to come over him, the faintest of shudders moving his narrow seamed mouth. His fingers clasped her wrist tight, as if he was truly afraid of her touching his mouth. “You’re still in shock.”

Was he convincing her or himself? she wondered. She had seen her mum waste herself away in a bottle of rum, had seen Andrew breathe his last… Grief and fear for her life had all been consuming her since Noah’s men had arrived at her doorstep three days ago, and yet it was this moment that threatened to shove her heart out of her chest…

This craven yearning to touch him, to discover if there was anything left of the boy who had treated her as if she was the most precious thing he had ever held… It was madness.

Because he had left that boy behind a long time ago when he had walked out with his godfather. Leaving Andrew and her behind.

Far, far behind.

“Dmitri?” a man’s deep voice called.

It jolted her out of her feverlike delirium and Jasmine tried to collect her breath.

“It might be a flesh wound, but you should still have it sterilized and cleaned up,” the man continued. “It doesn’t look as though Jasmine uses that knife for chopping vegetables.”

She looked up to find Dmitri looking at her with a sardonic gleam in his eyes, his brows raised in question.

He held her wrist aloft and returned it to her side. Then he gently nudged her back. To his friend, he added, “Hand me the first-aid kit, Stavros.”

Enough, Jas!

Was she so desperate for a connection from their awful past, so lonely that even Dmitri’s begrudging help would do?

She was damned, however, if she let his posh friends walk all over her, or insult her dirty roots.

Stavros, whose face was a study in austerity and cold arrogance, gazed at her, his expression inscrutable.

“I assure you, Mr. Sporades, my knife is not as filthy as you imagine.”

A smile touched the man’s mouth but his expression didn’t lose the severity. “You mistake me, Jasmine,” he said, assuming a familiarity that shocked her. “I’m in awe of how cunningly you found a way out of your predicament. Although I—”

“He wishes, rightly—” Dmitri cut in, frost turning his eyes into a thundering gray “—that you had not put yourself in such a dangerous situation in the first place.”

“Put myself in that situation? You talk as if this was a game to me. You think I…I wanted to sell myself like that?”

Such a savage growl erupted from Dmitri that it was like seeing a cat transform into a tiger, vicious claws unsheathed. “You don’t want to know how I dare ask that question, yineka mou, not in front of company. That is a discussion you and I will have later, when I’m not in danger of strangling you for the company you keep.”

The silence that followed the softly spoken threat was deafening, the shock on his friends’ faces sending a ripple down Jasmine’s spine.

Jasmine felt as if she had been slapped, as if her shame was written all over her face. There was none of that easy humor, that uncaring attitude that he had worn in the past couple of hours. “I’ve had enough of you and your insulting—”

She had barely turned around when his broad frame, bursting with contained violence, blocked her. “Do not test my patience, Jasmine.”

Something in the glint of his eye warned Jasmine to shut up.

“How bad is that cut?” Stavros intervened as if the room wasn’t crackling with furious energy.

“I can attend to it myself.” Dmitri turned and grinned, a wicked glint in his eyes. The transformation from brooding violence to charming rogue was so swift that Jasmine did a double take. “Or Leah can attend to me.”

Jasmine had never seen him smile like that.

Innocence had never been a luxury they had been afforded, and for as long back as she could remember of her childhood, Dmitri had been in it. And not this smiling, outrageous playboy who looked as though nothing touched him…

The expression in his eyes was dazzling, wicked and not…completely real. He knew what his outrageous remark would do and he had used it to deflect attention from him and his wound.

That smile was a practiced facade, she thought with a frown.

Leah shook her head. “Dmitri, stop taunting him. And, Stavros, really, enough with the caveman—”

“Tell your husband that I’m not sixteen anymore and he doesn’t need to patch me up.” This was Dmitri again, winking wickedly at Leah. “I had hoped you would have cured him of all this duty nonsense in your bed, pethi mou.”

A curse flew from the deceptively calm Stavros.

“You’re his wife?” Jasmine said to the blushing Leah, realizing she had spoken out loud when Dmitri looked at her.

“Who did you think she was?”

Challenge. Dare. Belligerence. All of it wrapped in a smooth tone.

With three sets of eyes resting on her, Jasmine flushed but refused to let him embarrass her. She poured defiance into her tone. “Your current squeeze.

“I’m sorry.” She said this to Leah, who was shaking her head at both men.

“Don’t be.” Leah smiled. “Dmitri is being his usual beastly self. I’m Leah Sporades. Giannis, their godfather, was my grandfather.”

Jasmine stood awkwardly as Stavros and Leah argued with Dmitri with an obvious familiarity while he threw outrageous remarks at them.

I knew him before you did.

The errant thought dropped into her head and she sent a startled glance toward Dmitri.

His gaze stayed on her, intense and brooding, as if he would like nothing but to skin her alive with his words. Seconds piled on as that same awareness locked them in their own little world. What would happen when his friends left?

Running a hand over her forehead, she looked away. The faster she got out of here the better.

She grabbed the kit from the unsuspecting Stavros and turned to Dmitri. “Stop with the macho posturing and sit down. The cut is on the far left side and you’re left-handed.”

His grin vanishing, Dmitri looked at her as if she had suddenly sprouted two heads.

She sighed. That mutinous, wary expression in his eyes… That she remembered.

“Strip, Dmitri.”

“Usually I’m filled with uncontainable anticipation at that command from a woman,” he said with an exaggerated leer, “but give back the kit to Stavros, Jasmine.”

Unbuttoning his shirt, Dmitri pulled it off his wound. Only a jerk of his mouth betrayed his pain. Ridges of leanly sculpted muscles defined his broad chest, only a smattering of dark hair dotting the olive-toned skin.

Her cheeks instantly tightened, her mouth dry as Jasmine tried to not stare. She took a step toward him, determined to act normal. “I’ll make it fast.”

Dmitri glared at her. “I’d rather you not touch me at all.”

“Why not? I’ve sewed up so many of Andrew’s wounds growing up that I—”

“Like Stavros pointed out so well, we don’t know where you and your hands have been. And yes, you are supertough to have made it all on your own for so many years… But we both know that you are a little fragile right now, ne? You were crawling all over me on the bike and—”

“Because you were driving like a maniac,” she yelled, her face heating up.

“—and a minute ago, you got upset at the sight of the small gash. I’d rather you not look at me with those sad, puppy eyes while you tend to me as if this was some grand reunion that we both have been breathlessly waiting for for years. My generosity toward you is fast disappearing and the cut burns like hell.”

The kit fell from her fingers, thudding like a drum in the silence.

There were so many offensive things in there that for a second, she couldn’t even sift through them all. Only stood weightless while the cruelty in his words carved through her.

Then the slow, merciful burn of humiliation spread across her throat and cheeks, merciful because anything was better than that hollow ache, her ribs squeezing her lungs tighter and tighter.

His words should not have touched her. He was nothing to her. She had hated him for years on principle. And yet his words knocked the breath out of her.

Was it because she had never been so literally saved from a situation before? Because, for most of her life, she had only depended on herself, and seeing a man like Dmitri come to her aid was warping her sense of reality?

Or was she just like her mum after all? One kind word from a man and she was ready to fall over herself and into his arms?

She struggled to hold his gaze but she did, pouring all the hatred, for him and for herself, into that look.

“You’re right. I’m not myself…” She drew in a shuddering breath. “And you… You’re not…”

His face was a tight mask over his angular features, his eyes suddenly hauntingly vulnerable. “Do not assume to know me, Jasmine.”

She shook her head, feeling immensely weary. “No, I don’t, do I? Have your cut looked at or let it fester and rot you, for all I care. I need a little more of your precious time and then I want out of here.”

Holding her shoulders rigidly, she turned.

The sympathy in Leah’s eyes was much too real, and Jasmine steeled herself against it. Stumbling through the lounge, she ducked into the first room and closed the door behind her and then walked into the en-suite bathroom.

A sea of white marble greeted her. With a tub long and wide enough for her to swim in, with gleaming gold taps, cold porcelain tiles and thick, fluffy towels, it was her version of paradise.

Tempted as she was to soak in the bath, she stripped and headed for the shower, needing to wash off the fear and grime of the past two days. If only she could so easily wash off the stink of her life…

The moment the water hit her, something in her unraveled. With a deep breath, Jasmine let the tears that had been threatening all night, out.

Only once, Jas, she warned herself.

She would cry just this once, without caring what it meant. She would let herself be weak just this one time. And then she would walk out and not look back.

She had been right in rejecting his offer of money when Andrew had died.

With the hatred of a thousand suns, she promised herself she would never set eyes on Dmitri Karegas again after tonight.

CHAPTER FOUR

DMITRI HISSED OUT a sharp breath as Stavros dabbed his wound with an alcohol wipe. Yet the burn of it over the open flesh was nothing compared to the burn in his gut.

The image of Jas’s face, her mouth trembling, her wide eyes stricken with hurt, would haunt him for the rest of his life. Along with a hundred other images of her.

Jas, looking at him with a toothless smile, Jas, at nine, sitting by him in companionable silence while he nursed a broken nose, Jas, her tears overflowing onto her cheeks as he said goodbye to her and Andrew…

Jas, as she glared at him with bristling hatred and fury at Andrew’s funeral five years ago…

And now this Jas, who saw through his veneer to the real him, who had melted into his arms with such vulnerability in her eyes…

Who had looked at him as if he was everything…

A furious cascade of such hunger churned in his gut that he had to grasp the handrest to anchor himself. Just the torrent of emotions that had deluged him ever since she had come at him with that knife was proof enough.

No! That look had been nothing but a result of shock.

He didn’t want her to look at him like that, as if he was her hero and knight wrapped in one.

He was no one’s hero, and definitely not hers. He shattered women’s silly romantic notions of him on a regular basis.

Yet the hurt in her eyes disturbed him far more than it should have.

Theos, where was the woman who had so thoroughly despised him that day?

Setting Jasmine’s expectations regarding him shouldn’t require this much thought and second-guessing.

“You know,” Leah’s voice cut in, “I always thought you were the kinder one between Stavros and you.” She sighed. “I’ll wait in the limo, Stavros. I don’t want to embarrass Jasmine anymore but if possible, please convince her to come with us.”

“She won’t accept anyone’s charity,” Dmitri said, before he could curb the words. Because he had tried once and she had bristled as if he had made an indecent proposition.

Leah’s displeasure swelled in the silence even after she left.

Unrolling gauze, Stavros leveled him a flat look. Dmitri refused to take the bait.

Stavros cut up a strip of medicinal gauze and covered up the wound and then neatly put on a plaster. Then he shut the plastic case and tucked it away. Uncoiling to his height, he finally met Dmitri’s gaze. “She seems…very innocent, Dmitri.”

He understood the awe in Stavros’s voice. Dmitri had been prepared for the shock of seeing Jasmine after all these years, but she was nothing like he had imagined.

From the moment he had entered that house, a tight fist had formed in his gut and it showed no signs of loosening. To find her like he did today, to imagine what would have happened if he had been late… Everything inside him ignited into a mindless fury, every lesson he had learned in controlling his temper consumed by that fear.

“Something I didn’t have when Giannis plucked me from there, you mean?” he challenged Stavros.

“Yes.”

Stavros’s unsaid question reverberated in that single word, but Dmitri was in no mood to talk about the lack of his innocence. Stavros had come to mean more to him than even his godfather but he wouldn’t go into his past even for him.

He refused to let it leave a mark on him.

“You don’t know to handle her,” Stavros said in that arrogant tone of his that drove Leah crazy.

“You’re afraid I’m going to corrupt that innocence,” Dmitri stated flatly.

Jasmine was like the key to the Pandora’s box he had left behind a long time ago. And all he wanted with the key was to throw it away and not look back.

“No,” Stavros replied, surprising him. “But it is also obvious that she—”

“She’s a debt, Stavros, and I pay them.”

A lethal smile touched his friend’s mouth. “Tell me your plans for her.”

He remained silent, drawing a complete blank.

What was he supposed to do with her now? She had no place in his life, even a minuscule one.

“We both know that you can’t just let her walk out of here. Not without ensuring she’s not going to be a danger to herself.”

“Danger she’s courted recklessly.” The words rattled out of Dmitri on a wave of anger.

Why the hell hadn’t she come to him before this? Theos, he understood addictions and the damage they caused, but for Andrew to leave her with so much debt, a debt that Dmitri had no doubt was the result of his gambling…?

Fury and powerlessness flew in his veins because Andrew wasn’t even here anymore for Dmitri to take it out on.

“So she deserves to be left to her fate?” Stavros asked with rising incredulity. “Is this how you would’ve helped if Calista had been in trouble?”

“Christos, she’s not going to…” The horror of the night when Stavros’s sister had died cut him off.

But then, none of them had known Calista had been on such a self-destructive path until it had been years too late. Pain pounded through his veins at the thought of Jasmine going down that path. Look at the situation she had found herself in. “She’s not going to calmly accept whatever I propose.”

“I know you hate responsibility of any kind, Dmitri, but this is—”

“Theos, Stavros, she does not belong with me. Not for a moment, much less for days.”

Stavros looked at him again, something emerging in his gaze. As if he could sense the panic in Dmitri’s words. As if he could see the noose tightening around Dmitri’s throat. “Then, you should have never answered her call for help.

“What about her is bothering you so much, Dmitri? I have never seen you in such a…state when it comes to a woman. You change them on a weekly basis. Why is she different?”

Dmitri pushed a hand through his hair, feeling as though his life was slipping out of his hands. How he wished he could fob her off on Stavros…

“You don’t want to be responsible for her and yet your conscience won’t let her walk away. How about you do not anger her, then?”

“Where was this infinite wisdom when it was Leah we were dealing with?” he couldn’t help pointing out.

“Learn from my lesson, then, won’t you?” Stavros growled, steel edging into his tone. As it always did when even the mention of how close he had come to losing Leah came up. “If you hurt her again, the damage she does to you might not be so minimal. Or even worse, she could just turn around and go back to that same world.”

“Her feelings are not my concern.” That was it. Jasmine could rant and rage at him all she wanted. All he cared about was that the woman was alive. If he had to shred her to pieces to do it, he would, again and again. But he wouldn’t let her return to that life.

He had failed so many people in his life, but he couldn’t fail Jasmine.

Jasmine stepped into the elegantly decorated bedroom and flopped onto the bed. The robe she had put on slid silkily against her skin but she just couldn’t get herself to wear the same jeans and sweater again. Not until she got them washed, at least.

Only silence came from the front lounge. Her heart thudding loudly, she looked up.

Dmitri prowled into the room and leaned against the wall, the movement pulling one lapel of his unbuttoned shirt higher, exposing a rope of leanly sculpted muscle. A gauze pad near his abdomen stood out white against his olive skin.

One of his brows lifted, a sardonic smile twisting his mouth.

Sinuous heat bloomed low in her belly, the sight of his naked torso a temptation like she had never imagined.

The luxurious black satin scrunched in her fingers painted a picture of her writhing beneath that leanly coiled frame, all of that simmering intensity unleashed on her, while he worshipped her with the mouth that had pierced her so much…

“Jasmine?”

His frown prompted her out of her fantasies, her skin heating up.

She was used to attention of the most extreme kind, knew lust in all its forms. And yet, when Dmitri looked at her, even innocently as he was doing now, as if he could see into her head and soul, she was extremely aware of it.

Of all the men in the world, something inside her reacted with a violent energy to Dmitri. Maybe it was because she had known him as a kid. Maybe because, for the first time in years, she was with a man and she didn’t have to worry about whether he was motivated by lust or some other inferior motive.

That was it.

Dmitri, for all his crushing words, was safe.

For years, she had wondered if the life she had adapted to to survive had somehow corrupted her ability to feel this kind of need, if her body would ever feel like it was anything but an instrument she had honed to make a living…if she would feel free enough…wondered if there was anything pure left in her thoughts except for the technicality of it…

Yet that it was Dmitri that incited her like this… It left her shaking to her very bones.

Didn’t her body know that she was supposed to hate him even if he looked like a Greek god? That he was a man who turned his back on friends because they didn’t fit into his new life?

She was like a deer planning her escape route, Dmitri decided, leaning against the door. Not that he didn’t think it was for the best.

The moment he saw her on the bed, his bed, in his robe, even if it fell to her ankles, his blood had vanished south.

She had looked so lovely for a second there, claws withdrawn. Like a lioness who wanted to be petted for a little while. Before she most likely ate you.

“You look as if you have a fever.”

She nodded. “I don’t feel… I’m just achy all over.”

Her words emerged as a rough croak. The soft admission from her was as strange as the feverish look in those dark black eyes. Scrubbed of sleep and any lingering softness that he had ruthlessly pushed away, they glowed with determination. And regret punched him in the gut even as he knew that it was better this way.

He didn’t want her all soft and melting. He wanted her to fight him and hate him.

Had she been hurt in their tussle? he thought then, the very idea horrifying him. Frowning, he took a step forward and clasped her cheek.

She flinched away from him. A silent roar burst into life inside of him, and he forced himself to take multiple breaths.

Theos, he hated when she flinched at his nearness like that…

Which was a thousand kinds of insanity because he had practically yelled at her to not come near him.

Stavros had taught him well. It took all of his willpower to control that wild thing inside him that wanted her hands on him. All of her on him. Reminded himself that all he offered a woman was sex. And Jasmine deserved a lot more.

Clenching his jaw, he fought for composure. “Did I hurt you when I tackled you?”

“No. I just… I pulled a muscle the other day and it’s still bothering me.”

“Let me see it.”

“No.” Jasmine drew in a deep breath and forced the words to come out evenly. “Thanks for coming so promptly today, Dmitri. For literally coming to my rescue.”

“You almost choked on that, ne?”

She shrugged, refusing to take the bait.

He entered the bedroom and went to the wardrobe.

Panic blooming in her gut, she looked around the bedroom she had run into.

It was his bedroom, of course.

She tried to slide off the silky sheets. And lost the little dignity she had in the process when he turned around, his brows raised.

Sleeping in Dmitri’s bed was the last thing she needed. It was far too intimate for the little peace that she needed for her overactive mind.

She dangled her legs on the side of the bed. “I didn’t realize this was your bedroom. I will just…”

“Stay,” he ordered her softly.

With his back still against the wardrobe, he extracted a perfectly pressed white cotton shirt with sure precision, shrugged off the bloodied shirt. Too mesmerized by the sight of his corded biceps and chest to even pretend otherwise, Jasmine watched as he pulled on the fresh shirt.

“I will sleep in the longue or order housekeeping to clean up Stavros’s room.” He buttoned it down, his gaze taking in her flushed face with a casual indifference. “Are you hungry?”

Getting up and padding away from the bed, she walked to the chaise longue. “No. And you don’t have to babysit me. I just want to crash for a few hours.”

“I have no interest in spending the night babysitting you. Tell me…how did Noah agree to this outrageous idea of an auction?”

“You know how.”

Another step closer. But caught between the bed and him, there was no way to escape. Retribution that he had threatened shone in every line of his body. “Dmitri…”

“Enlighten me again how it happened.”

“Even after all these years, we still owed him money. Noah would have liked for me to sign away my entire life and I didn’t want to continue—” a shudder went through her spine “—there anymore. I thought of you and suggested he put me up for auction.”

He stared down at her as if he could see through her skin and into the very heart of her. “Where was he going to find buyers if not for me?”

Something in his question struck a chord of fear in Jasmine. “There weren’t any others.”

“Noah is not famous for his kindness. I don’t understand how he agreed to your condition.”

“Because all the world knows that you’re a gazillionaire and Noah just happens to know that at one time you used to have a conscience. I gave him an opening to exploit that. If you’re through being disgusted with me—”

“Disgusted? Theos, what the hell was Andrew thinking to leave you with so much debt? Why didn’t he—”

Just hearing her brother judged for what little he could have done inflamed her. “Don’t speak his name.”

“He should have taken better care of you. I don’t understand—”

Shivering from head to toe, she struggled to keep the grief at bay. Even after five years, it shredded her strength and composure with its claws. “How do you know what he did or didn’t do? You left us.”

Was that it? Had she hated him all these years because he had left her alone with an alcoholic mother and a brother addicted to gambling away the very little they had ever had? Was her bitter envy over his better life at the root of it all?

“I didn’t have a choice, Jasmine.”

“You didn’t have a choice except to forget us? He always watched your back, stopped you from getting yourself killed. If not for him, you would have died a violent death a long time ago.”

Every inch of his face became immobile under her attack. He stood absolutely still, calmly absorbing her insults.

Only the haunting depths of his eyes betrayed his shock. “You think I need a reminder, Theos mou, that without Andrew, there would have been nothing left of me for Giannis to save…”

God, what the hell had she said?

The cynical curve of his mouth… The emptiness in his eyes… She never wanted to be witness to that ever again.

She didn’t want to see that flash of pain in his eyes ever again, much less cause it.

“That…that came out wrong. I just… I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve never…” She took a bracing breath. “Seeing you just reminds me that he’s forever gone, Dmitri. That he never had a single chance to break away from it all.”

He stepped away from her as if to avoid the poison of her words. “Until I can ensure that there’s no danger to you, you have no choice but to face me, Jasmine.” Still, he didn’t sound angry or upset. Still, he only spoke about her safety.

As if it was an onerous duty he had to take on even if she was ungrateful.

Jasmine wanted to kick herself for her impulsive mouth. Or curl into a ball and cry. In one swoop, she had spewed out all the bitterness she had struggled to keep at bay for years. She couldn’t bear to look at herself, much less at Dmitri. She couldn’t bear to be in his presence for a second longer without wanting to slap herself.

It was being near him, she realized. From the moment he had stepped in there, it was as if she had lost all sense of herself. It was as if she had forgotten all the hard lessons she had learned so early in life.

“I have seven thousand and change saved that I can pay you instantly. The rest of it will take me time, but I will pay you back even if I have to…”

A slow grin spread across his devilish mouth. He shifted his feet, bit his lower lip, as if to contain the laughter spilling out, leaned his hip against the wall as if he were posing for a photo shoot and smiled again. The veins in his forearms stood out as he folded his arms, oozing sex appeal.

Jasmine’s breath caught at the sheer, stark beauty of it.

There was nothing false or practiced about the curve of his mouth now.

It lit up his light gray eyes, carved a dimple in his cheek. Her knees turned to mush as he dipped his head low and batted at her with his shoulder. “So you’re determined to pay me back, then, yes?”

Of course, the man didn’t need his fists anymore. He could charm the birds from the sky with that smile. Was it any wonder that women threw themselves at his feet? What woman wouldn’t want him to look at her with need in those gorgeous eyes? What woman wouldn’t want those rough hands on her, that luscious mouth driving her wild?

She was getting hot just thinking about it. “Every last penny,” she croaked out.

“How?”

“I’ll come up with something.”

“You know, Jas…” He pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes in an exaggerated show of patience. “Spanking’s never been my thing but, Theos, I’m so tempted to give it a try right now. You and your ideas and your plans…”

She gasped, heat streaking her cheeks. “I was running out of options.”

He prowled toward her like a predator. Heat from his body enveloped her, coating her very breath.

“And what if someone else ended up buying…you?”

“You’re trying to scare me.”

“There was someone else, Jas, someone who was willing to pay a lot of money to own you.”

Jas remained silent, fear and confusion stealing rational thought from her.

“Didn’t you think of contacting me even once? Did you have to wait until it got this desperate?”

She had. She had thought of him countless times, her body and mind weary after another long night, after facing another of her mother’s drunken episodes. After feeling as if she would never make a dent in her debt, after facing another man look at her as if he could own her body and soul for a few bucks. After seeing her life pass day after day in that pit.

In a moment of weakness, she had called Katrakis Textiles in Athens once. The receptionist had even politely asked her for her name. In the end, she had chickened out.

In the end, it had been easier to hate him from a distance than take his pity.

“I don’t like depending on anyone for anything,” she said instead.

“Fate has a way of punching us with exactly what we don’t want. There was someone else who bid for you. Which meant Noah had two dogs out for the same bone, and he let us go at it.”

Another bidder? Her knees gave out and she sank to the longue.

Sweat beaded her brow, nausea climbing up her throat. Noah had tricked her. If Dmitri hadn’t come along, he would have sold her virginity to someone else.

The horror of what could have happened filled her with dread.

“Noah said you called it a virginity auction. And that’s what it truly was. What I can’t figure out is who else wanted to pay off that debt and why.”

Her head spun in a thousand different directions and Jasmine struggled to hold on to her sanity. Clutching her head, she walked away from him.

Just leave. Don’t care what he paid, Jas. He can afford it.

Walk away, the survivor in her begged.

“How much did you pay Noah?”

“You’re not my priciest toy, if that’s what worries you.”

Her gut heaved with anticipated dread, her right eye twitching uncontrollably from keeping her gaze so straight. Something was very wrong; she knew it in her bones.

“Stop taunting me, Dmitri. How much do I owe you?”

“A hundred and thirty thousand pounds, but since I’m feeling generous I’ll round it down to an even hundred.”

A hundred thousand pounds? Her gut flopped to her feet. “That can’t be true. That much money… It’s ridiculous, God…”

Clutching the wall behind her, she gasped for breath. “This is my worst nightmare come true… Oh, God…” It would take her ten lifetimes to make so much money. She would never be able to pay him back, never walk away from this.

“Being saved from a life of trading your body is your worst nightmare?”

Uncontrollable shivers overtook her. Hunger and lack of sleep from the past two days hit her like a battering ram, the sheer willpower with which she had kept herself going, shattering finally. “No. Bound to you eternally by this debt is.”

She swayed and sank to the thickly carpeted floor.

A soft curse ripped through the air before she was pulled up like a rag doll. “Theos, Jas.” His voice wasn’t loud, yet it carried something. His gaze searched her, his fingers splayed against her jaw, a strange glitter darkening his eyes. “Now is not the time to lose that reckless pride.”

Pushing his hands away, she sank back onto the chaise longue. Her body felt boneless, as if she would never stop falling.

All she wanted was to curl up and sleep for the next decade. All she wanted was to let someone else bear the burden, just once. “How am I going to pay you back? Lord, what am I going to do?” she muttered to herself.

The bedroom door opened and an army of uniformed staff set down an array of dishes that had her gut twisting with hunger. She looked at the clock, which said five in the morning.

The staff vanished just as they had appeared, with minimal fuss, making her wonder if she had imagined them.

“Until you figure out a way, you will eat, sleep and generally keep your presence in my life to a minimum.”

Swallowing at the mouthwatering aroma from the dishes, she nodded. Eyed the distance from the chaise to the table and groaned.

With a curse that sounded filthy to even her untrained ears, he stopped by the table and lifted a silver dome off a plate. “When did you eat last?”

“A cheeseburger about twenty hours ago,” she whispered pathetically.

Pushing her legs out of his way none too gently, and careful enough to not even accidentally touch her hip that was propped up, he sat down at the foot of the chaise. Forking pasta with his left hand, which was such a familiarly intimate gesture from her childhood that a lump formed in her throat, he brought it to her mouth.

Jasmine closed her mouth over the farfalle eagerly.

“Don’t make a habit of this, Jas.”

He sounded uncomfortable, wary. Was he afraid that she would climb all over him again and embarrass them both?

Closing her eyes, Jas chewed, relishing the thick white sauce. “Won’t even remember this, Dmitri.”

She ate in silence while the influx of carbs lulled her to sleep. She finished off a bottle of water and stretched back down on the chaise.

“I’ll see you later.”

She lifted her thumbs as he stilled by the door, pensive. She felt like that mangy dog again. Only instead of letting the doorman kick her, Dmitri had decided to keep her.

Something strange was going on with him. The fleeting thought came to her even as her head felt as if it was filled with cotton candy.

One minute, he was shredding her into pieces with such ruthlessness, and the next…such tenderness showed in his eyes that she thought she would shatter in the face of it.

“Where are you going? When will you return?”

He stared at her for a long, disturbing, soul-crushing moment before he covered the distance between them. Still reclining on the chaise, she waited with bated breath, her heart hammering behind her rib cage.

He would surely cut her to pieces for asking that question, for assuming such…

Kneeling down to her level, he took her hand in his. Her hand was delicately slender in his huge one, and suddenly, she felt a sense of security she hadn’t known in a long time. It was as if a fuzzy feeling unspooled in her gut.

“I have a very irate portfolio manager that I have to mollify after my latest bout of shopping frenzy,” he whispered, and she laughed through the weariness.

“Tonight I can sleep, can’t I? For as long as I want?”

He squeezed her hand, and she thought how rough his palm was. “Yes, you can, Jas. No one will come in. You’re…safe here.”

Her eyelids felt as if they would glue together forever. Jas squeezed his hand back and whispered, “Thank you,” before giving in to the sleep claiming her.

Maybe she didn’t have to hate Dmitri so thoroughly, the thought came to her. She would still pay him back, yes, but they could at least be friends, couldn’t they?

As much friends as she could be with a man who had bought her and who set her pulse racing like nothing in life ever had.

A man who was making it harder for her to hate him.

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