Bought: The Greek′s Baby
Bought: The Greek's Baby
JENNIE LUCAS
From poverty to power – this Greek tycoon claims his baby!American beauty Eve Craig fell under the spell of powerful Talos Xenakis in a hot-blooded Athens encounter… Three months later and Eve has lost her innocence – and her memory! But she has aroused Talos’s desire and his anger – she has betrayed him. So what better way to punish the woman who nearly ruined him than marry – and destroy – her…? Only she’s now carrying his love-child…
Eve felt Talos’s dark gaze fall upon her mouth as he said softly, “I’ll show you the place where I first kissed you.”
Her bones turned to liquid. She looked up at him, her heart pounding as she licked her lips involuntarily. “Where is that?”
His eyes were hot and dark. “In Venice.”
“Venice,” she repeated, and the word was a wistful sigh. She looked up at him with yearning, knowing she should refuse—knowing she should stay in London and see the specialist Dr. Bartlett had recommended. But her refusal caught in her throat. Caught by her romantic dreams. Caught by him.
Talos reached down to stroke her tender bottom lip with his thumb, caressing her face with his powerful hands.
“Come to Venice,” he said darkly. “I will show you everything.”
He cupped her face with both hands, holding her hard against his body as he looked down at her, commanding her with his gaze.
“And then,” he whispered, “you will marry me.”
Jennie Lucas grew up dreaming about faraway lands. At fifteen, hungry for experience beyond the borders of her small Idaho city, she went to a Connecticut boarding school on scholarship. She took her first solo trip to Europe at sixteen, then put off college and travelled around the US, supporting herself with jobs as diverse as gas station cashier and newspaper advertising assistant. At twenty-two she met the man who would be her husband. After their marriage she graduated from Kent State with a degree in English. Seven years after she started writing she got the magical call from London that turned her into a published author.
Since then life has been hectic, with a new writing career, a sexy husband and two small children, but she’s having a wonderful (albeit sleepless) time. She loves immersing herself in dramatic, glamorous, passionate stories. Maybe she can’t physically travel to Morocco or Spain right now, but for a few hours a day, while her children are sleeping, she can be there in her books. Jennie loves to hear from her readers. You can visit her website at www.jennielucas.com, or drop her a note at jennie@jennielucas.com
Bought: The Greek’s Baby
By
Jennie Lucas
MILLS & BOON®
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/)
Dear Reader
Have you ever wished you could start your life all over again?
Have you ever wished you could leave behind all your regrets—all the headaches and heartaches of the past—and miraculously have a brand-new life?
That is what happens to Eve Craig. She wakes up in a London hospital with no memory of who she is. Even more shocking—she’s three months pregnant!
A darkly handsome Greek billionaire shows up at the hospital, claiming to be her baby’s father. He demands Eve marry him at once! But how can she marry a man she doesn’t remember? The stranger’s ruthless sensual power frightens her, so she fights him.
But Talos Xenakis won’t take no for an answer. Three months ago his beautiful ex-mistress gave him her virginity, then heartlessly betrayed him. He came for revenge. Discovering she’s pregnant, he changes his plans. He will marry Eve, make her regain her memory, then destroy her—body and soul.
Can we ever truly leave the past behind us? Maybe with the power of love…
With warmest wishes for an unforgettable year
Jennie Lucas
To Patty Sowell,
the miracle of our house, with gratitude
CHAPTER ONE
TALOS XENAKIS had heard a lot of lies in his life, particularly in relation to his beautiful, ruthless ex-mistress. But this one topped them all.
“It can’t be true,” he said in shock, staring at the doctor. “She’s lying.”
“I assure you, Mr. Xenakis, it’s true,” Dr. Bartlett replied gravely. “She has no memory. Not of you, not of me, not even of her accident yesterday. And yet there’s no physical injury.”
“Because she’s lying!”
“She was wearing a seat belt when her head hit the air bag,” Dr. Bartlett continued. “There was no concussion.”
Talos stared at him with a scowl. He had a reputation as a doctor of immense skill and integrity. He was rich from a lifetime of serving wealthy, aristocratic patients—so he couldn’t be bought. He was known as a family man, still completely in love with his wife of fifty years, an adored father of three and grandfather of eight—so he couldn’t be seduced. So he honestly must believe Eve Craig had amnesia.
Amnesia.
Talos’s lip curled. After all of her devilish cleverness, he would have expected more of her.
Eleven weeks ago, after stabbing him in the back, Eve Craig had vanished from Athens like a ghost. His men had searched for her all over the world without success until two days ago, when she’d suddenly resurfaced in London for her stepfather’s funeral.
Talos had dropped a billion-dollar deal in Sydney, ordering his men to trail her until he could reach London on his private jet. Kefalas and Leonidas had been right behind Eve yesterday afternoon when she’d left the private hospital in Harley Street. They’d watched her tuck her long, glossy dark hair beneath a silk scarf, put on big black sunglasses and white driving gloves and drive away in her silver Aston Martin convertible.
Right into a red postbox on the sidewalk.
“It was so strange, boss,” Kefalas had told him that morning when he’d arrived from Sydney. “She seemed fine at the funeral. But leaving the doctor’s office she drove like a drunk. She didn’t even recognize us when we helped her back into the hospital after the accident.”
Now, Dr. Bartlett looked equally puzzled as he scratched the back of his wispy white head. “I held her overnight for observation, but cannot find anything physically wrong with her.”
Talos ground his teeth. “Because she doesn’t have amnesia. She’s playing you for a fool!”
The elderly doctor stiffened. “I do not believe Miss Craig is lying, Mr. Xenakis. I have known her since she was fourteen, when she first came here with her mother from America.” He shook his head as he mused, “All the tests came back negative. The only symptom seems to be the amnesia. Leading me to perhaps wonder if the accident was merely the catalyst—the trauma was an emotional one.”
“You mean she brought it on herself?”
“I wouldn’t say that exactly. But this is outside my field. It’s why I’ve recommended a colleague, Dr. Green.”
“A psychiatrist.”
“Yes.”
Talos latched on to the one valuable bit of information. “So if there’s nothing physically wrong with her, she can leave the hospital.”
The doctor hesitated. “She’s certainly strong enough. But as she has no memory, perhaps it would be better if a member of her family…”
“She has no family,” Talos interrupted. “Her stepfather was her only relative, and he died three days ago.”
“I did hear about Mr. Craig, and was very sorry. But I hoped perhaps Eve might have an aunt or uncle, or even a cousin in Boston…”
“She does not,” Talos said evenly, although he had no idea. He only knew nothing was going to keep him from taking Eve away with him today. “I am her…” What? Ex-lover bent on revenge? “Boyfriend,” he finished smoothly. “I will take care of her.”
“So your men told me yesterday, when they said you were on your way.” Dr. Bartlett eyed him as if he did not quite like what he saw. “But it does not sound as if you even believe she needs special care.”
“If you say she has amnesia, I have no choice but to believe it.”
“You called her a liar.”
Talos gave a crooked grin. “Creative untruths are part of her charm.”
“So you are close?” The doctor looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “Do you plan to marry her?”
Talos knew the answer the man wanted—the only answer that would release Eve into his power. And so he told the truth. “She is everything to me. Everything.”
Scrutinizing Talos’s expression, the doctor stroked his beard with something like satisfaction, then nodded in a sudden brisk decision. “Very well. I’ll release her into your care, Mr. Xenakis. Take good care of her. Take her home.”
Take her to Mithridos? Talos would die before he would pollute his home that way. But Athens…yes. He’d lock her up and make her thoroughly regret betraying him. “You will release her to me today?”
The doctor nodded. “Yes. Make her feel loved,” he warned. “Make her feel wanted and secure.”
“Loved and secure,” he repeated, barely able to keep the sneer from his face.
Dr. Bartlett frowned. “Surely, Mr. Xenakis, you can appreciate what these last twenty-four hours have meant to Eve. She’s had nothing to cling to. No memory of family or friends to sustain her. No sense of home or memory of belonging. She didn’t even know her name until I told her.”
“Don’t worry,” Talos said grimly. “I’ll take good care of her.”
But as he started to turn away, the doctor stopped him. “There is something else you should know.”
“What?”
“Normally I would never disclose this information. But in this unique case, I feel the need for informed care far exceeds the concern for privacy…”
With a muttered curse in Greek, Talos tapped his foot impatiently. “What is it?”
“Eve is pregnant.”
At that word, Talos’s head shot up. His heart literally stopped in his chest.
“Pregnant?” he choked. “When?”
“When I did the ultrasound yesterday, I estimated conception in mid-June.”
June.
For nearly all of that month Talos had barely left her side. He’d kept tabs on his business almost unwillingly, begrudging every moment of his life that wasn’t spent in bed with her. Their affair had burned him through, blood and bone. He’d thought—God help him—that he could trust her. Because lust had seized his mind and will.
“I feel I’m at fault,” Dr. Bartlett continued regretfully. “If I’d had any idea how upset she was at the news of her pregnancy, I would never have let her drive away from the hospital. But don’t worry,” he added hastily, “your baby is fine.”
His baby.
Talos stared at him, hardly able to breathe.
The doctor suddenly gave a hearty, cheerful laugh, patting him on the back. “Congratulations, Mr. Xenakis. You’re going to be a father.”
Around her, Eve was dimly aware of a whisper of voices and the distant hum of a radiator. She felt someone—the nurse?—sweep a cool cloth against her forehead. The soft sheets against her skin felt heavy. She smelled the fresh scent of rain and cotton. But she stubbornly kept her eyes closed.
She didn’t want to wake up. She didn’t want to leave the dark peacefulness of sleep, the warmth of barely remembered dreams that still cradled her like an embrace.
She didn’t want to return to the nothingness of existence, where she had no memories. No identity. Nothing to cling to. It was an emptiness far worse than any pain.
And then the doctor had told her three hours ago that she was pregnant.
She couldn’t remember conceiving the child. Couldn’t even remember the face of her baby’s father. But she would meet him today. He would be here any minute.
Covering her head with her pillow, she squeezed her eyes shut. She was racked with nervousness and fear at the thought of meeting him for the first time—the father of her unborn baby!
What kind of man would he be?
She heard the door open and close. She held her breath. Then someone sat heavily next to her, causing her body to lean toward him on the mattress. Strong arms suddenly were around her. She felt the warmth of a man’s body, breathed in the woodsy musk of his cologne.
“Eve, I’m here.” The man’s voice was deep and low, with an exotic accent she couldn’t place. “I’ve come for you.”
A thrill rushed through her. With an intake of breath, she pushed aside the pillow.
He was so close to her. She saw the sharpness of his cheekbones first. The dark scruff on his hard jaw. The tawny color of his olive skin. Then, as he drew back, she saw his whole face.
He was, quite simply, breathtaking.
How was it possible for a man to be at once so masculine—and so beautiful? His black hair brushed the top of his ears. He had the face of an angel. Of a warrior. His Roman nose had been broken at least once, from the tiny imperfection of the angle. He had a full, sensual mouth, with a twist of his lips that revealed arrogance and perhaps more—cruelty?
His eyes gleamed down at her, dark as night. And beneath their black depths, for a moment she saw a ravaging fire of hatred—as if he wished she were dead, as if she were a ghost he’d long ago consigned to hell.
Then she blinked, and he was smiling down at her with tender concern.
She must have imagined that fiery hatred, she thought in bewilderment. Not surprising considering how screwy her head had been since the accident—an accident she couldn’t even remember!
“Eve,” he whispered as he stroked her cheek. “I thought I’d never find you.”
The touch of his rough fingers against her skin burned her. She felt a sizzle down her neck to her breasts, making her nipples taut and her belly spiral in a strange tightness. With an intake of breath, she searched his face, hardly able to believe the evidence of her own eyes.
This—this man was her lover? He looked nothing like she’d expected.
When Dr. Bartlett had told her that her boyfriend was on his way from Australia, she’d imagined a kindlooking man with a loving heart, a sense of humor. A gentle man who would share his troubles while they washed dishes together at the end of the day. She’d dreamed of a loving partner. An equal.
Never in her wildest dreams had she ever imagined a dark god like this, cruelly beautiful, masculine and so powerful that he could no doubt slice her heart in two with a look.
“Aren’t you glad to see me?” he said in a low voice.
She searched his face, holding her breath.
But no memories rushed through her, no recollections of the hard curve of his cheek or the slightly wicked twist to his sensual lips. No memories of a thousand little intimacies between lovers. Nothing!
He helped her sit up. His hands lingered possessively on her back, causing a sudden heat across her body.
Eve licked her lips nervously.
“You are…you must be…Talos Xenakis?” she ventured, waiting for him to deny it. Almost hoping he would, and that her real boyfriend, the kind-faced man with the gentle eyes, would walk through the door.
The Greek tycoon’s hands on her back paused.
“So you do recognize me.”
She shook her head. “No. Your two employees…the doctor…they told me your name. They said you were on your way.”
He looked down at her, searching her face.
“Dr. Bartlett told me you had amnesia. I didn’t believe it. But it’s true, isn’t it? You really don’t remember me.”
She could only imagine how that must hurt him! “I’m sorry,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “I keep trying, but the first thing I can remember is your employee—Kefalas?—pulling me from my car. It was a lucky thing they were in the car behind me!”
His lips seemed to curve imperceptibly. “Yes. Very lucky.” He sat up straight. “You will be leaving the hospital today.”
She took a deep breath. “Today?”
“Right now.”
“But…” She bit her lip then blurted out, “But I still can’t remember anything! I hoped when I saw you…”
“You hoped seeing me would bring your memory back?”
She nodded miserably. There was no point in feeling disappointed, she told herself fiercely, or making him feel more badly about it than he must already!
But she couldn’t stop the lump in her throat. She’d been counting on the idea that when she saw the face of the man she loved, the man who loved her, her amnesia would end.
Unless they didn’t love each other, she thought suddenly. Unless she’d gotten pregnant by a man who was barely more than a one-night stand.
“I’m sure you must feel so hurt,” she said, trying to push away her sudden fear. She said haltingly, “I can only imagine how it must feel, to love someone who can’t remember you.”
Do you love me? she thought desperately, trying to read his face. Do I love you?
“Shhh. It’s all right.” Lowering his head, he kissed her tenderly on the forehead. The warmth of his nearness was like the summer sun on a winter’s day. Then he lifted her chin, and his dark eyes whipped through her like a blast of heat. “Don’t worry, Eve. In time, you will remember—everything.”
Looking into his face gratefully, Eve realized that her first impression of him had been utterly wrong. He wasn’t cruel. He was kind. How else to explain the fact that he could be so gentle and patient and loving, pushing aside his own hurt to focus only on her?
She took a deep breath. She would be as brave as he was. Pushing the blankets aside, she said over the lump in her throat, “I’ll get dressed to go.”
He stopped her. “Wait. There’s something else we need to talk about.”
She knew instantly what he meant to discuss. And without the barrier of blankets between them, in just her paper-thin hospital gown, she felt painfully bare, vulnerable in every way. She yanked the blankets back over her body, tugging them halfway to her neck.
“He told you, didn’t he?” she whispered.
His voice was low, almost grim. “Yes.”
“Are you happy?” Her voice trembled. “About the news?”
She held her breath as his darkly handsome face stared down at her. When he finally spoke, his voice was charged with some emotion she didn’t recognize.
“I was surprised.”
She searched his gaze. “So the baby wasn’t something we planned?”
His hands tightened, twisting the blanket in his grip. He glanced down at it, then looked at her.
“I’ve never seen you like this,” he said in a low voice. His black gaze hungrily caressed her face. With his fingertips, he brushed some dark tendrils from her cheek. “No makeup. Bare.”
She tried to pull away. “I’m sure I look terrible.”
But he drew her closer. His eyes were dark as he looked down at her, making her shiver from deep within.
“Are you happy about the baby?” she said softly.
He put his arms around her. “I’m going to take good care of you.”
Why wouldn’t he answer? She swallowed, then lifted her head to give him a weak smile. “Don’t worry, I’m not an invalid. I hope the amnesia will disappear in a day or two. Dr. Bartlett said something about a specialist—”
His arms tightened around her, cradling her against his hard chest.
“You don’t need another doctor,” he said roughly. “You just need to come home with me.”
She could feel the beat of his heart against her cheek through his black button-down shirt. She was enveloped in his masculine scent, sandalwood and amber, exotic and woodsy. Against her will, she closed her eyes. She breathed in his smell, heard the beat of his heart, felt his warmth.
Everything else faded. The private hospital room, the nurses and doctor visible through the window of the door, the sound of one of Talos’s men speaking urgently into his cell phone in some language she didn’t recognize, the antiseptic smell, the beeps of the machines…it all faded.
There was only this.
Only him.
Held securely in his strong arms, for the first time since her accident she felt safe and loved. She felt as if she had a place in the world. With him.
He kissed her hair softly. She felt the warmth of his breath, the hot caress of his lips, and a tremble went over her. Fear? Longing?
Did he love her?
She reached upward, cupping his rough jawline with her hands. Though his clothes were sharply pressed, the dark shadow on his chin suggested he’d changed clothes on the plane without bothering to shave. He’d rushed here from Australia. He’d flown all night.
Did that mean love?
“Why didn’t you come to London with me for my stepfather’s funeral?” she said slowly.
He paused. When he spoke, he seemed to choose his words with care.
“I was busy in Sydney acquiring a new company. Believe me,” he said, “I never wanted to be away from you for this long.”
Eve felt there was something he wasn’t telling her. Or was that just her own confusion playing tricks on her? She couldn’t trust anything in this hazy, empty world, not even her own mind! “But why—”
“You are so beautiful, Eve,” he said, cupping her face. He exhaled in a rush. “I almost feared I’d never see your face again.”
“When you heard about the accident, you mean? You were worried about me?” she said in a small voice. When he didn’t answer, she licked her lips. With a deep breath, she asked the question that had been burning through her. “Because we love each other?”
His jaw clenched as he took a deep breath.
“You were a virgin when I seduced you, Eve,” he said in a low voice. “You’d never been with any man before I took you to my bed three months ago.”
She’d been a virgin?
A wave of relief washed over her. Learning she was pregnant by a boyfriend she couldn’t remember had been a tremendous shock. She’d wondered why they weren’t married—wondered all sorts of things. But if Talos had been her one and only lover, if she’d been a virgin at twenty-five, surely that said something about her character?
But did it also mean love?
She looked up into his handsome face, opening her mouth to ask again, Do I love you? Do you love me?
Then she stopped.
There was something beneath his darkly penetrating eyes. Something he wasn’t saying. Something hidden beneath his words.
But before she could understand what her intuition was telling her, Talos placed his broad hands over hers. The warmth of his fingers burned her, intertwined with her own. Trapping her, but not against her will. Her heart pounded faster.
“Get ready to leave.” He lowered his head to kiss her on the temple, running his hands up and down her bare forearms. “I want to take you home.”
Her breathing became short and shallow as he touched her skin. Little prickles of sensation sped up her arms, down her back, making her hair stand on end. The tingle swirled across her earlobes, down her neck, making her naked breasts beneath her thin hospital gown suddenly feel tight and full. She tried to remember the question she’d been asking, but it had already swept from her mind.
“All right,” she breathed, looking up into his handsome face.
Gallantly, he helped her from the bed, lifting her gently to her feet. She was more aware than ever of how much taller he was, how much more powerful. He was at least six inches taller, with an extra hundred pounds of pure muscle. Looking up at him, she forgot everything but her own longing and fascinated desire for the man towering over her like a dark angel.
“I’m sorry it took so long for me to reach you, Eve,” he said in a low voice. “But I’m here now.” He kissed her head softly, his arms tightening around her as he pulled her into an embrace. “And I’m never going to let you go.”
CHAPTER TWO
BENEATH heavily lidded eyes, Talos watched Eve as he led her to the black Rolls-Royce purring on the street in front of the hospital.
She wasn’t faking her amnesia. In spite of his initial incredulity, he now had no doubt. She had no idea of who he was or what she’d done.
And now she was pregnant with his child.
That changed everything.
He gently helped her to the car. She had no luggage. One of his men had taken her smashed Aston-Martin to the garage, while the other had gone to make quiet amends for the smashed postbox. She wore the black silk dress and carried the black clutch purse from her stepfather’s funeral yesterday.
The black dress clung to her breasts and hips when she walked, the silk shimmering and sliding against her hips and breasts. Her dark, glossy hair had been brushed into a fresh ponytail.
She wore no makeup. It made her look different. Talos had never known her to go out without lipstick before—although God knew, with her lustrous skin, full pink lips and sparkling blue eyes, she didn’t need it to cause every man she met, from the elderly hospital porter to the teenaged boy walking past them on the sidewalk, to stop and catch his breath.
And as she turned back to face him on the sidewalk with a sweetly innocent smile, Talos was grimly aware that he was far from immune to her charm.
“Where are we going?” she asked, crinkling her forehead. “You never said.”
“Home,” he replied, guiding her into the backseat of the limousine. He closed the door behind her.
His body’s reaction to her was irritating—and troubling. He didn’t like it. Because he hated her.
When he’d first seen Eve in the hospital, she’d been curled up on the single bed beneath a thick blanket. She’d looked pale and wan, nothing like the vivacious, tempestuous vixen he remembered. Sleeping, she’d looked innocent, far younger than her twenty-five years.
She’d looked small. Fragile.
Talos had come to London specifically to destroy her. For the last three months, he’d been dreaming of it.
But how could he take his revenge if she not only had no memory of her crimes, but she was pregnant with his baby?
Tightening his hands into fists, he stalked to the other side of the car. Though it was only September, summer had abruptly fled London. A steady drizzle was falling from low gray clouds.
He climbed in beside her and she turned to him without missing a beat. “Where is our home?”
“My home—” he closed his door with a bang “—is Athens.”
She gaped at him. “Athens?”
“It’s where I live, and I must take care of you.” He gave her a brief, tight smile. “Doctor’s orders.”
“So I live there with you?”
“No.”
“We don’t live together?”
“You like to travel,” he said ironically.
“So where are my clothes?” she said in a small voice. “And my passport?”
“Likely at your stepfather’s estate. My staff will collect your things and meet us at the airport.”
“But…” She looked out the window, then turned back to face him and said in a rush, lifting her chin, “I want to see my home. My childhood home. Where is it?”
He gave her an assessing glance. “Your stepfather’s estate is in Buckinghamshire, I believe. But visiting there won’t help you. You spent one night there before the funeral. It hasn’t been your home for a long time.”
“Please, Talos.” Her sapphire eyes gleamed. “I want to see my home.”
His brow furrowed as he looked down at her pleading face.
Eve really had changed, he thought. His mistress had never begged him for anything. She’d never even said please.
Except…
Except for the first night he’d taken her to his bed, when all her defenses had been briefly stripped away and he’d discovered the most desired woman in the world was, against all expectations, a virgin. As he’d pushed himself inside her, she’d looked up at him in a breathless hush with those violet-blue eyes, and he’d thought…he’d almost thought…
He cut off the memory savagely.
He wouldn’t think about how it had once been with her. He wouldn’t think how she had nearly made him lose everything, including his mind.
Eve Craig was a fatal habit that he’d finally broken—and he intended to keep it that way.
“Very well,” he ground out, turning back to face her. “I will take you home—but just to collect your things. We cannot stay.”
Her lovely face brightened. She looked so young without makeup, with her hair in the casual ponytail. She looked barely old enough to be in college, far younger than his own thirty-eight years.
“Thank you,” she said warmly.
Thank you. Another phrase he’d never heard from her before.
He turned away, leaning back in the beige leather seat as his chauffeur drove smoothly through the city, turning right from Marylebone to the Edgware Road. As the car merged onto the M1 heading north, Talos stared out at the passing rain, then closed his eyes, tense and weary from jet lag and the whiplash of the past two days.
Eve, pregnant.
He was still reeling.
No wonder she’d crashed her car, he thought dully. Just the thought of losing her figure and not fitting into all her designer clothes must have made her crazy. All those months of not being able to drink champagne and dance till dawn with all of her rich, beautiful, shallow friends? Eve must have been more than shocked—she must have been furious.
Eve, pregnant.
He would not trust her to take care of a house plant, much less a child. She was not even slightly maternal. She wouldn’t love a baby. She was the least loving person Talos had ever met.
Slowly, he opened his eyes.
He hadn’t even known about the baby an hour ago, but now he was absolutely sure of one thing.
He had to protect his child.
“So I don’t live in England,” he heard her say. Steeling his expression, he turned to face her. Her face looked bewildered, almost sad as she added hesitantly, “I don’t have a home?”
Home. Against his will, he had the sudden image of Eve in his bedroom at Mithridos, spread across his large bed, with the curtains twisting from the sea breeze coming off the sparkling Aegean. That had never happened, and it never would!
“You live in hotels,” he answered coldly. “I told you. You travel constantly.”
“So how do I hold down a job?” she said in disbelief.
“You don’t. You spend your days shopping and attending parties around the world. You’re an heiress. A famous beauty.”
She gaped at him. “You’re joking.”
“No.” He left it at that. He could hardly explain how she and her dissolute friends traveled in packs like parasites, sucking a luxury hotel dry before moving on to the next. If he told her that, she might hear the scorn in his voice and question the true nature of his feelings.
Malakas, how was it possible that he’d been so caught by her? What madness had possessed him to be so enslaved?
How could he make sure that his child never was neglected, hurt or abandoned by her after she regained her memory?
A new thought suddenly occurred to him.
If she could not remember him, if she could not remember who she was or what she’d done, it meant she would have no idea of what was about to hit her. She would have no defenses.
A slow smile curved his lips as he built his new plan. He could take everything from her, including their baby. And she would never see it coming.
“So I was here for my stepfather’s funeral,” she said softly. “But I’m not British.”
“Your mother was, I believe. You both returned to England some years ago.”
She brightened. “My mother!”
“Dead,” he informed her brutally.
She froze, her face crumpling. Watching the swift movement of scenery on the outskirts of London through the window behind her, he remembered that her mother’s death was fresh news to her. And that he was supposed to be in love with her. He had to make her believe that if he wanted his plan to succeed.
“I’m sorry, Eve,” he said abruptly. “But as far as I know, you have no family.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice.
Pulling her into his arms, he held her close against his chest, kissing the top of her head. Her hair, messy and unwashed, still managed to smell like vanilla and sugar, the scents he associated with her. The scent that immediately made his body go hard and taut with longing, with the immediate temptation of a long-desired vice.
Thee mou. Why couldn’t he stop wanting her? After everything she’d done, the way she’d nearly ruined him, how was it possible that his body still longed for her like a dying man thirsting for water? Was he really such a suicidal fool? Did he have no honor, no pride?
He had pride, he thought, clenching his jaw. It was her. Even now, acting so sweetly demure, her innocence attracted him like a flame. He remembered the fire of passion inside her. And how he was the only man who’d ever tasted it.
He felt himself tighten.
Stop! he ordered himself. He wouldn’t think about her in bed. He wouldn’t want her. He did have some control over his own body, damn it!
She clenched her fingers against his sleeve, her face pressed into his crisply tailored shirt.
“So I have no one.” Her voice was small, almost a whisper. “No parents. No brothers or sisters. No one.”
He looked down at her, tipping her chin upwards so he could see the tears sparkling in her beautiful violet-blue eyes. “You have me.”
She swallowed, searching his face as if trying to read the emotion behind his expression. He schooled his features into concern and admiration and the closest attempt at love he could manage, never having actually felt it.
A sigh came from her lips as she exhaled. A soft smile traced her lips. “And our baby.”
He gave a single grim nod. Their baby was the reason he had to make sure his control over Eve was absolute. The reason he had to make her believe he cared about her.
It was no different, he thought sardonically, than she’d once done to him. He would lull her into believing she could trust him. Make her willingly marry him.
Then—oh, then…
The instant their marriage was final, his life’s goal would be to make her remember the truth. He would be with her when she finally remembered. He would see her face as it fell.
And he would crush her. The thought of revenge made his heart glad.
Not revenge, he told himself. Justice.
Leaning forward, he held her closer in the backseat of the Rolls-Royce.
“Eve.” He cupped her face in his large hands. “I want you to marry me.”
Marry him?
Yes, Eve thought in a daze, looking up into his handsome face. Feeling his strong, rough hands against the softness of her skin, the warmth of his touch seared her, tracing down her neck to her breasts and lower still.
How could any man be so masculine, so beautiful, so powerful all at once? Talos was everything her tattered, empty, frightened soul had desired. He would protect her. Love her. He would complete her life.
Yes, yes, yes.
But even as the words rose to her lips, something stopped her. Something she couldn’t understand made her pull her face away from his touch.
“Marry you?” she whispered. She searched his dark eyes, her heartbeat quickening in her chest. “I don’t even know you.”
He blinked. She saw that he was surprised. Then his eyebrows lowered into a frown.
“You knew me well enough to conceive my child.”
She swallowed. “But I can’t remember you,” she said. “It wouldn’t be fair to take you as my husband. It wouldn’t be right.”
“I was raised without a father. I do not intend my child to endure that. I will give our baby a name. Do not deny me,” he said urgently.
Deny him? How could any woman deny anything to a man like Talos Xenakis?
But it didn’t feel right.
With a deep breath, she turned away, glancing out at the passing scenery. It had changed since they’d left the outskirts of London, become soft and green beyond the rain-splattered windows. Trees had started to turn orange and yellow, rich autumnal colors between the green.
“Eve.”
She looked back at Talos. He was so darkly handsome and powerful, and at the moment his sensual mouth was pressed into a hard line. He was clearly determined to have his way.
But something inside her made her resist him.
“Thank you for asking me to marry you,” she said awkwardly. “It’s very warm and loving. But my baby won’t be born for months—”
“Our baby,” he corrected her.
“And I can’t be your wife when I can’t even remember you.”
“We’ll see,” he said softly. Silence fell on their drive as she watched the passing scenery. Finally, the car turned off the road to a smaller lane. She saw a redbrick Georgian mansion at the base of tree-covered hills, reflected in a wide gray lake.
“Is that my stepfather’s house?” she breathed in shock.
“Yes.”
The car drove up the long lane through the park and woodlands then stopped in front of the entrance. As Talos opened the door and helped her from the car, Eve looked up with an intake of breath. She craned her head back to get a good look at the mansion, with its striking Victorian Gothic parapets stabbing upward into the steel-gray sky.
Holding her hand over her eyes to block out the noon sunlight that had finally penetrated the clouds, she looked back at him. “I lived here as a teenager?”
“And now it is yours, along with a vast fortune.”
She looked at him sharply. “How do you know?”
“You knew it yourself yesterday, when you attended the reading of the will.”
“But how do you know?” she persisted.
He shrugged. “I’ll make sure you get a copy of the will. Come.” Taking her hand, he escorted her past the grand sweep of the front door. Inside the foyer, five servants waited to greet her, headed by the housekeeper.
“Oh, Miss Craig,” the plump woman sniffed into her apron. “Your stepfather loved you so much. He would be so glad to see you’ve finally come home!”
Home? But it wasn’t her home. Apparently, she’d barely set foot in this place for years!
But looking at the elderly housekeeper’s sad face, Eve felt a sympathetic pang. She put an arm around her.
“He was a good man, wasn’t he?” she said softly.
“Yes, that he was, miss. The best. And he loved you as his own natural-born child. Even though you weren’t, and American to boot,” she added, wiping her eyes. “He’d be so happy you’ve finally come back after so long.”
Eve paused delicately. “Has it been so…?”
“Six, no, seven years. Mr. Craig always invited you back for Christmas, but…”
Her voice trailed off as she wiped tears with her apron.
“But I never came, did I?” Eve said.
The older woman shook her head wistfully.
Eve swallowed. Apparently she’d taken her stepfather’s money and let him pay her bills as she shopped and partied her way around the world, but hadn’t even had the grace to return for an occasional visit!
And now he was dead.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered over the lump in her throat.
“Let me take you to your room. You’ll find it’s just as you left it last.”
Shortly afterwards, the quietly sobbing housekeeper left them in Eve’s old bedroom. In the darkness, with Talos behind her in the only light of the double doorway, Eve yanked back the black curtains, filling the room with gray light.
Turning back to get a good look at her room, she choked back a gasp of dismay. Everything was red and black, down to the king-sized black lacquer bed. Dramatic. Modern. Sexy.
Garish.
Talos leaned against the door frame as Eve looked through the room, desperate for something, anything that would tell her what she needed to know. She opened closet doors, running her hands idly over the new clothes that hung there. The clothes were like the room, sexy and dramatic. Powerful clothes for a woman who desired attention and knew how to wield it.
Eve shivered.
She pulled open the shelves, touching each item lightly with her hands. Black stiletto heels. A Gucci handbag. A Louis Vuitton suitcase. Finding her passport, she thumbed through it, searching for answers that weren’t there. Zanzibar? Mumbai? Cape Town?
“You weren’t kidding,” she said slowly. “I do travel constantly. Especially for the last three months.”
When he didn’t reply, she turned back to face him. His face seemed carefully expressionless.
“Yes,” was all he said. “I know.”
She tossed the passport into her suitcase with the sexy clothes and shoes that all seemed foreign, as if they belonged to someone else. Leaning against the modern black four-poster bed, she looked around her with a heavy sigh. “There’s nothing here.”
“I told you.”
Desolately, she went to the bookshelf. It held only faded fashion magazines, years out of date, and a few slender volumes on etiquette and charm. She picked up the book on top, a splashy pop-culture book and read the title out loud in dismay. “How to Get Your Man?”
“That’s never been your problem.” There was a distinct edge to his voice.
Her heart was breaking, and he was making jokes? She made a huffing sound and chucked the book in his general direction. He caught it midair.
“Look, Eve,” he said evenly. “It all doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter—these things tell me who I am!” She jabbed her finger toward the closet. “I’ve just found out I was the kind of girl who only cared about her looks, who ignored a stepfather who loved me, and who never bothered to come home at Christmas.” Tears rushed into her eyes. “And I let him die alone,” she whispered. “How could I have been so cruel?”
Desolately, she picked up a dusty photo in a gilded frame. She saw the image of a man giving a cheeky wink, his arm around a beautiful dark-haired woman who was laughing with joy. Between them was a plump little girl with a big beaming smile and two missing front teeth.
She stared at the adults in the photo for a very long time, but no memories came back to her. They had to be her parents, but she couldn’t remember them. Was she really that heartless? Did she truly have no soul?
“What did you find?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t help.” She threw the photograph across the room, where it bounced softly against her bed. She covered her face with her hands. “I can’t remember them. I can’t!”
Crossing the bedroom in three long strides, he took her by the shoulders. “I barely knew my parents, but it hasn’t hurt me.”
“It’s not just the past,” she whispered. “Why would you want to be with a person like me? Without substance, without heart?”
He didn’t answer.
“And now it’s all too late,” she said over the lump in her throat. “I’ve lost my only family. I have no home.”
“Your home is with me,” he said in a low voice.
She looked up at him. The sunlight from the tall windows gently caressed his face, illuminating floating dust motes like tiny stars all around them in the red-and-black bedroom.
“Let me show you.” He slowly stroked up her bare arms, his fingers light against her skin. “Marry me.”
Electricity spread up her arms and down her body. She fought the urge to step closer to him, to press her body against his chest. Shaking her head, she breathed, “I can’t.”
“Why?” he growled.
“I don’t want you to marry me out of pity!”
His hands suddenly moved around her, caressing her back through her dress, causing the black silk to slide deliciously over her body with his featherlight touch. “Pity is the last thing I feel for you.”
She closed her eyes, leaning forward in spite of herself. Wanting more of his touch. Wanting to feel his warmth. His heat.
He pulled her more deeply into his arms. She felt the scent of him, the warmth of his body beneath his clothes.
“Come away with me,” he whispered into her hair. “Come to Athens and be my bride.”
She felt the hardness of his body against hers, the strength of his arms around her. He was so much taller and more powerful than she was. His hands ran softly along the edges of her hips, up the length of her back as her breasts crushed against his chest.
She swallowed, trembling. She licked her lips, moving her cheek against his shirt as she looked up at him. “I can’t just run away,” she sighed. No matter how she wished she could. “I need my memory back, Talos. I can’t just float through the world not knowing who I am. I can’t marry a virtual stranger, even if you’re the father of my child—”
“So I’ll take you to the place where we first met. To where we began.” She felt his dark gaze fall upon her mouth as he said softly, “I’ll show you the place where I first kissed you.”
Her bones turned to liquid. She looked up at him, her heart pounding as she licked her lips involuntarily. “Where is that?”
His eyes were hot and dark. “In Venice.”
“Venice,” she repeated, and the word was a wistful sigh. She looked up at him with yearning, knowing she should refuse—knowing she should stay in London and see the specialist Dr. Bartlett had recommended. But her refusal caught in her throat. Caught by her romantic dreams. Caught by him.
Talos reached down to stroke her tender bottom lip with his thumb, caressing her face with his powerful hands.
“Come to Venice,” he said darkly. “I will show you everything.” He cupped her face with both hands, holding her hard against his body as he looked down at her, commanding her with his gaze. “And then,” he whispered, “you will marry me.”
CHAPTER THREE
SUNLIGHT reflected off the water as they took the motoscafo, a private water taxi, from the Marco Polo Airport. The September weather was bright and warm as they crossed the lagoon, passing by the Piazza San Marco and the Bridge of Sighs on the way to their hotel.
Venice. Talos had never expected to return here again.
But sometimes, he thought grimly, a man had to change the playbook in the middle of the game. He would do whatever it took, be as romantic a fool as any man could be, in order to lure Eve into marriage before her memory returned.
He looked down at her in his arms as they crossed the water of the canal. Her eyes shone with wonder, her full pink lips were slightly parted as she gazed around the city with awe.
The same way every man who saw Eve looked at her.
Even right now in this water taxi. The young Italian driver kept glancing back in his mirror. Talos’s bodyguard, Kefalas, was sitting in the seat behind them, and even he had looked at Eve a bit longer than strictly necessary.
Eve was freshly showered and had changed her clothes on his private flight from London. Her dark hair now fell in thick, glossy waves past her bare shoulders, brushing the nipples Talos could easily picture beneath that clinging red jersey dress. The dress showed off the top swell of her overflowing breasts beneath the spaghetti straps, and barely reached halfway down her creamy thighs. She’d put on lipstick, a red color that matched her dress. Her legs were slender and perfect, ending in sharp black stiletto heels.
He couldn’t blame either of them for staring. Even though he wanted to kill them for it.
Strange, Talos thought, he’d never been jealous before of other men staring at Eve. He’d always accepted it as his due. He’d taken it for granted that other men would always want what he, Talos, possessed.
But for the first time it caused his stomach to curl. Why? Because Eve was carrying his child? Because he intended to make her his wife?
His wife in name only, he reminded himself. To protect his unborn child. Not because he cared for Eve. He felt nothing for her but scorn. And, he was forced to admit, lust.
Giving the driver a hard stare until the young man blushed and returned his focus to the wheel, Talos pulled Eve closer against him on the seat. She leaned back against his chest, reaching her arms over his neck and smiling up at him.
“It’s beautiful here.” Her blue eyes were as warm as bluebells in a spring meadow. “Thank you for bringing me to Venice. Even though I’m sure it was very inconvenient…”
He smiled down at her. Taking her hand, he brought it to his lips.
“Nothing is inconvenient to me if it gives you pleasure,” he said, and softly pressed his mouth against her skin.
He felt her shiver beneath his touch in the warm afternoon sun. The air was salty and fresh. In the distance, he could hear the calls of seagulls, hear the distant chiming of medieval church bells.
“You’re so good to me,” she whispered, visibly affected by the way he’d kissed her hand. The realization that she was almost like an innocent, easily swayed by sensual desire, lit a dark fire in his heart.
The femme fatale she’d once been had disappeared along with her memories, it seemed. Dressed in the red dress and lipstick she still looked just like the same arrogant, cruel, fascinating creature she’d been three months ago, but she’d changed completely. With her skittish reactions, her youthful naïveté, she was almost like a virgin.
Except she wasn’t—she was pregnant with his baby. And while she’d certainly been a virgin before they’d met, she’d never been innocent!
Remembering how they’d conceived that baby, all of his limbs suddenly seemed to burn where he had contact with her. Looking down into her beautiful face, he saw the vulnerability in her blue eyes, saw her pupils dilate. He was reminded of those hot breathless weeks in Athens when her naked body had been beneath his own. When he’d thought that beneath her achingly beautiful, shallow surface something existed that might be truly rare—truly worth possessing.
And he’d kept right on thinking that up until the day he’d seen her having breakfast with his rival, coldly giving him evidence to destroy Talos’s company.
Remember that moment, he told himself harshly. Remember how she betrayed you—and why.
But as Eve looked up at him dreamily beneath the elegant, decrepit palazzos of Venice, with the sunlight shining off the canals, all he could suddenly think was that he wanted to kiss her. Now. Hard. To brand her permanently as his, to punish those cherry-red lips until she gasped and cried out in his arms.
His hands tightened around her shoulders, his fingers gripping into her slight frame as he remembered their days and nights in June. He’d been addicted to bedding her. He’d been lost in a woman, in a way he’d never experienced before or since.
He considered himself ruthless. He considered himself strong. But she’d bested him and he’d never seen it coming.
Now, he hated her with all his heart.
But he still wanted her. Wanted her with a consuming desire that could destroy him, if he ever let down his guard.
He would never give in to her temptation. Even if his weeks of bedding her had been the most erotically charged experience of his life, he would never take her again. If he ever even kissed her, he might be lighting a flame that he could not control.
He watched her nervously lick her lips—those full, cherry-red lips that had once made him shudder and scream with desire so intense he’d literally thought it might kill him.
He could tell she was bewildered by the electric connection between them. She didn’t understand it. Unlike the Eve he’d known, who’d kept her feelings so carefully hidden, this girl didn’t guard her expression. Her thoughts were clearly bare on her angelically beautiful face.
Good, he told himself harshly. The perfect weapon to use against her. He would convince her to marry him. He would romance her. Woo her. Court her. Lure her. He would take her as his wife—today. By any means necessary.
Except one.
He would not take her to his bed. He would not.
Eve turned her face up toward the bright Italian sun from the windows of the boat, leaning back against Talos’s strong, powerful body as the motoscafo bounced across the waves. The leather seat hummed beneath her thighs from the vibrations of the engine.
She took a deep breath of the sharp, salty air. Her skin felt warm. Her body felt hot all over as she leaned against Talos’s hard chest. Even through his black shirt she could feel the heat off his skin.
Then he smiled down at her. His smile did all kinds of strange things to her, making her heart pound. Her days of darkness and emptiness in rainy London now seemed like a lonely dream. She was in Italy with Talos. And their baby. She placed her hand on her still-flat belly.
The water taxi slowed, pulled near the dock of a fifteenth-century palazzo. She stared at the high pointed windows that embellished the crumbling red stucco facade with awe at its exotic Gothic beauty. “Is that where we’re going?”
His black eyes gleamed as he looked down at her. “Our hotel.”
Oh. Their hotel.
She swallowed as she climbed from the taxi to the dock, picturing what it would be like to share a room with this man. To share space. To share a bed.
Just thinking of it, she stumbled on the dock.
“Careful,” Talos said gruffly, grabbing her arm to steady her. “You don’t have your sea legs yet.”
All the colors of Venice, the twisting, sparkling water, the bright blue sky and tall, red campanile tower of the nearby piazza, seemed to fade into the background with a swirl of color behind him.
“You’re right,” she said over the lump in her throat. “I don’t.”
They stood on the dock as his bodyguard-assistant, Kefalas, paid the young Italian taxi driver and organized the luggage. But all Eve could see was Talos.
He was so handsome and tall and strong, she thought. She felt his arms tighten around her, and she suddenly wondered if he was going to kiss her. The thought scared her. She jerked away from him nervously. “We will, um, get separate rooms, won’t we?”
She heard a low, sensual laugh escape him as he shook his head.
She licked her lips. “But—”
“I don’t intend to let you out of my sight.” He came forward toward her on the dock, and it took every ounce of her courage not to back away. He loosely brushed a tendril back from the blowing salty breeze. Kissing her temple, he whispered, “Or out of my arms.”
Enfolding her hand in his own, he drew her toward the palatial hotel, where they were whisked inside by the waiting staff.
As Eve walked through the exquisite lobby, past soaring gilded arches and the sweeping staircase, she became slowly aware of men’s heads whipping around to stare at her, almost like spectators following a tennis match.
It would have been funny, if she hadn’t felt like the yellow ball.
Why were they staring at her?
What was wrong with her?
The doorman gaped at her, then jumped to open the door.
The male clerk did a double take from the elaborate desk before he looked away, clearing his throat.
The group of Italian businessmen crossing the lobby weren’t so discreet. Three young men in pinstriped suits stopped in place on the marble floor, staring at her with open jaws. One man jabbed another in the ribs with a grin. Speaking rapidly in Italian, he started to come toward her. His friend stopped him by grabbing his wrist, gesturing toward Talos with palpable fear. Apparently too cowed by Talos to approach her, all three men continued to stare at her, murmuring soft words of appreciation.
Eve felt vulnerable.
Exposed.
Her cheeks went hot beneath all the scrutiny. She was grateful when Talos took her hand and led her toward the elevator. She could feel all the men in the lobby stare after her, hear their mournful sighs meld with the click of her stiletto heels on the marble floor. They were probably staring at her backside right now.
Her neck broke out into a cold sweat.
Why were they staring at her?
Then in a flash, she knew.
The dress.
The tiny red dress that she’d taken from her bedroom closet in Buckinghamshire. Compared to the rest of the wardrobe, she’d thought it the simplest, easiest choice, comfortable and casual. It had seemed like a nice, though somewhat small, sundress in stretchy fabric. And since she apparently owned no comfortable shoes whatsoever, she’d chosen the black stiletto sandals, which at least wouldn’t squeeze her toes. After her shower, she’d brushed out her dark hair and tentatively put on the lipstick in her handbag.
She’d hoped she would get used to her own clothes, feel confident in them.
Boy, had she been wrong.
Though the knit fabric was indeed soft and stretchy, it was no match for her pregnant breasts, which spilled out quite distressingly over the top. The stiletto heels made her legs very long but also caused her hips to thrust forward and sway with every commanding step.
Comfortable? Casual?
Her clothes cried out for male attention, and no matter where they went, men’s eyes centered on her. No matter their nationality, no matter their age or profession, men couldn’t stop staring!
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JENNIE LUCAS
From poverty to power – this Greek tycoon claims his baby!American beauty Eve Craig fell under the spell of powerful Talos Xenakis in a hot-blooded Athens encounter… Three months later and Eve has lost her innocence – and her memory! But she has aroused Talos’s desire and his anger – she has betrayed him. So what better way to punish the woman who nearly ruined him than marry – and destroy – her…? Only she’s now carrying his love-child…
Eve felt Talos’s dark gaze fall upon her mouth as he said softly, “I’ll show you the place where I first kissed you.”
Her bones turned to liquid. She looked up at him, her heart pounding as she licked her lips involuntarily. “Where is that?”
His eyes were hot and dark. “In Venice.”
“Venice,” she repeated, and the word was a wistful sigh. She looked up at him with yearning, knowing she should refuse—knowing she should stay in London and see the specialist Dr. Bartlett had recommended. But her refusal caught in her throat. Caught by her romantic dreams. Caught by him.
Talos reached down to stroke her tender bottom lip with his thumb, caressing her face with his powerful hands.
“Come to Venice,” he said darkly. “I will show you everything.”
He cupped her face with both hands, holding her hard against his body as he looked down at her, commanding her with his gaze.
“And then,” he whispered, “you will marry me.”
Jennie Lucas grew up dreaming about faraway lands. At fifteen, hungry for experience beyond the borders of her small Idaho city, she went to a Connecticut boarding school on scholarship. She took her first solo trip to Europe at sixteen, then put off college and travelled around the US, supporting herself with jobs as diverse as gas station cashier and newspaper advertising assistant. At twenty-two she met the man who would be her husband. After their marriage she graduated from Kent State with a degree in English. Seven years after she started writing she got the magical call from London that turned her into a published author.
Since then life has been hectic, with a new writing career, a sexy husband and two small children, but she’s having a wonderful (albeit sleepless) time. She loves immersing herself in dramatic, glamorous, passionate stories. Maybe she can’t physically travel to Morocco or Spain right now, but for a few hours a day, while her children are sleeping, she can be there in her books. Jennie loves to hear from her readers. You can visit her website at www.jennielucas.com, or drop her a note at jennie@jennielucas.com
Bought: The Greek’s Baby
By
Jennie Lucas
MILLS & BOON®
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/)
Dear Reader
Have you ever wished you could start your life all over again?
Have you ever wished you could leave behind all your regrets—all the headaches and heartaches of the past—and miraculously have a brand-new life?
That is what happens to Eve Craig. She wakes up in a London hospital with no memory of who she is. Even more shocking—she’s three months pregnant!
A darkly handsome Greek billionaire shows up at the hospital, claiming to be her baby’s father. He demands Eve marry him at once! But how can she marry a man she doesn’t remember? The stranger’s ruthless sensual power frightens her, so she fights him.
But Talos Xenakis won’t take no for an answer. Three months ago his beautiful ex-mistress gave him her virginity, then heartlessly betrayed him. He came for revenge. Discovering she’s pregnant, he changes his plans. He will marry Eve, make her regain her memory, then destroy her—body and soul.
Can we ever truly leave the past behind us? Maybe with the power of love…
With warmest wishes for an unforgettable year
Jennie Lucas
To Patty Sowell,
the miracle of our house, with gratitude
CHAPTER ONE
TALOS XENAKIS had heard a lot of lies in his life, particularly in relation to his beautiful, ruthless ex-mistress. But this one topped them all.
“It can’t be true,” he said in shock, staring at the doctor. “She’s lying.”
“I assure you, Mr. Xenakis, it’s true,” Dr. Bartlett replied gravely. “She has no memory. Not of you, not of me, not even of her accident yesterday. And yet there’s no physical injury.”
“Because she’s lying!”
“She was wearing a seat belt when her head hit the air bag,” Dr. Bartlett continued. “There was no concussion.”
Talos stared at him with a scowl. He had a reputation as a doctor of immense skill and integrity. He was rich from a lifetime of serving wealthy, aristocratic patients—so he couldn’t be bought. He was known as a family man, still completely in love with his wife of fifty years, an adored father of three and grandfather of eight—so he couldn’t be seduced. So he honestly must believe Eve Craig had amnesia.
Amnesia.
Talos’s lip curled. After all of her devilish cleverness, he would have expected more of her.
Eleven weeks ago, after stabbing him in the back, Eve Craig had vanished from Athens like a ghost. His men had searched for her all over the world without success until two days ago, when she’d suddenly resurfaced in London for her stepfather’s funeral.
Talos had dropped a billion-dollar deal in Sydney, ordering his men to trail her until he could reach London on his private jet. Kefalas and Leonidas had been right behind Eve yesterday afternoon when she’d left the private hospital in Harley Street. They’d watched her tuck her long, glossy dark hair beneath a silk scarf, put on big black sunglasses and white driving gloves and drive away in her silver Aston Martin convertible.
Right into a red postbox on the sidewalk.
“It was so strange, boss,” Kefalas had told him that morning when he’d arrived from Sydney. “She seemed fine at the funeral. But leaving the doctor’s office she drove like a drunk. She didn’t even recognize us when we helped her back into the hospital after the accident.”
Now, Dr. Bartlett looked equally puzzled as he scratched the back of his wispy white head. “I held her overnight for observation, but cannot find anything physically wrong with her.”
Talos ground his teeth. “Because she doesn’t have amnesia. She’s playing you for a fool!”
The elderly doctor stiffened. “I do not believe Miss Craig is lying, Mr. Xenakis. I have known her since she was fourteen, when she first came here with her mother from America.” He shook his head as he mused, “All the tests came back negative. The only symptom seems to be the amnesia. Leading me to perhaps wonder if the accident was merely the catalyst—the trauma was an emotional one.”
“You mean she brought it on herself?”
“I wouldn’t say that exactly. But this is outside my field. It’s why I’ve recommended a colleague, Dr. Green.”
“A psychiatrist.”
“Yes.”
Talos latched on to the one valuable bit of information. “So if there’s nothing physically wrong with her, she can leave the hospital.”
The doctor hesitated. “She’s certainly strong enough. But as she has no memory, perhaps it would be better if a member of her family…”
“She has no family,” Talos interrupted. “Her stepfather was her only relative, and he died three days ago.”
“I did hear about Mr. Craig, and was very sorry. But I hoped perhaps Eve might have an aunt or uncle, or even a cousin in Boston…”
“She does not,” Talos said evenly, although he had no idea. He only knew nothing was going to keep him from taking Eve away with him today. “I am her…” What? Ex-lover bent on revenge? “Boyfriend,” he finished smoothly. “I will take care of her.”
“So your men told me yesterday, when they said you were on your way.” Dr. Bartlett eyed him as if he did not quite like what he saw. “But it does not sound as if you even believe she needs special care.”
“If you say she has amnesia, I have no choice but to believe it.”
“You called her a liar.”
Talos gave a crooked grin. “Creative untruths are part of her charm.”
“So you are close?” The doctor looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “Do you plan to marry her?”
Talos knew the answer the man wanted—the only answer that would release Eve into his power. And so he told the truth. “She is everything to me. Everything.”
Scrutinizing Talos’s expression, the doctor stroked his beard with something like satisfaction, then nodded in a sudden brisk decision. “Very well. I’ll release her into your care, Mr. Xenakis. Take good care of her. Take her home.”
Take her to Mithridos? Talos would die before he would pollute his home that way. But Athens…yes. He’d lock her up and make her thoroughly regret betraying him. “You will release her to me today?”
The doctor nodded. “Yes. Make her feel loved,” he warned. “Make her feel wanted and secure.”
“Loved and secure,” he repeated, barely able to keep the sneer from his face.
Dr. Bartlett frowned. “Surely, Mr. Xenakis, you can appreciate what these last twenty-four hours have meant to Eve. She’s had nothing to cling to. No memory of family or friends to sustain her. No sense of home or memory of belonging. She didn’t even know her name until I told her.”
“Don’t worry,” Talos said grimly. “I’ll take good care of her.”
But as he started to turn away, the doctor stopped him. “There is something else you should know.”
“What?”
“Normally I would never disclose this information. But in this unique case, I feel the need for informed care far exceeds the concern for privacy…”
With a muttered curse in Greek, Talos tapped his foot impatiently. “What is it?”
“Eve is pregnant.”
At that word, Talos’s head shot up. His heart literally stopped in his chest.
“Pregnant?” he choked. “When?”
“When I did the ultrasound yesterday, I estimated conception in mid-June.”
June.
For nearly all of that month Talos had barely left her side. He’d kept tabs on his business almost unwillingly, begrudging every moment of his life that wasn’t spent in bed with her. Their affair had burned him through, blood and bone. He’d thought—God help him—that he could trust her. Because lust had seized his mind and will.
“I feel I’m at fault,” Dr. Bartlett continued regretfully. “If I’d had any idea how upset she was at the news of her pregnancy, I would never have let her drive away from the hospital. But don’t worry,” he added hastily, “your baby is fine.”
His baby.
Talos stared at him, hardly able to breathe.
The doctor suddenly gave a hearty, cheerful laugh, patting him on the back. “Congratulations, Mr. Xenakis. You’re going to be a father.”
Around her, Eve was dimly aware of a whisper of voices and the distant hum of a radiator. She felt someone—the nurse?—sweep a cool cloth against her forehead. The soft sheets against her skin felt heavy. She smelled the fresh scent of rain and cotton. But she stubbornly kept her eyes closed.
She didn’t want to wake up. She didn’t want to leave the dark peacefulness of sleep, the warmth of barely remembered dreams that still cradled her like an embrace.
She didn’t want to return to the nothingness of existence, where she had no memories. No identity. Nothing to cling to. It was an emptiness far worse than any pain.
And then the doctor had told her three hours ago that she was pregnant.
She couldn’t remember conceiving the child. Couldn’t even remember the face of her baby’s father. But she would meet him today. He would be here any minute.
Covering her head with her pillow, she squeezed her eyes shut. She was racked with nervousness and fear at the thought of meeting him for the first time—the father of her unborn baby!
What kind of man would he be?
She heard the door open and close. She held her breath. Then someone sat heavily next to her, causing her body to lean toward him on the mattress. Strong arms suddenly were around her. She felt the warmth of a man’s body, breathed in the woodsy musk of his cologne.
“Eve, I’m here.” The man’s voice was deep and low, with an exotic accent she couldn’t place. “I’ve come for you.”
A thrill rushed through her. With an intake of breath, she pushed aside the pillow.
He was so close to her. She saw the sharpness of his cheekbones first. The dark scruff on his hard jaw. The tawny color of his olive skin. Then, as he drew back, she saw his whole face.
He was, quite simply, breathtaking.
How was it possible for a man to be at once so masculine—and so beautiful? His black hair brushed the top of his ears. He had the face of an angel. Of a warrior. His Roman nose had been broken at least once, from the tiny imperfection of the angle. He had a full, sensual mouth, with a twist of his lips that revealed arrogance and perhaps more—cruelty?
His eyes gleamed down at her, dark as night. And beneath their black depths, for a moment she saw a ravaging fire of hatred—as if he wished she were dead, as if she were a ghost he’d long ago consigned to hell.
Then she blinked, and he was smiling down at her with tender concern.
She must have imagined that fiery hatred, she thought in bewilderment. Not surprising considering how screwy her head had been since the accident—an accident she couldn’t even remember!
“Eve,” he whispered as he stroked her cheek. “I thought I’d never find you.”
The touch of his rough fingers against her skin burned her. She felt a sizzle down her neck to her breasts, making her nipples taut and her belly spiral in a strange tightness. With an intake of breath, she searched his face, hardly able to believe the evidence of her own eyes.
This—this man was her lover? He looked nothing like she’d expected.
When Dr. Bartlett had told her that her boyfriend was on his way from Australia, she’d imagined a kindlooking man with a loving heart, a sense of humor. A gentle man who would share his troubles while they washed dishes together at the end of the day. She’d dreamed of a loving partner. An equal.
Never in her wildest dreams had she ever imagined a dark god like this, cruelly beautiful, masculine and so powerful that he could no doubt slice her heart in two with a look.
“Aren’t you glad to see me?” he said in a low voice.
She searched his face, holding her breath.
But no memories rushed through her, no recollections of the hard curve of his cheek or the slightly wicked twist to his sensual lips. No memories of a thousand little intimacies between lovers. Nothing!
He helped her sit up. His hands lingered possessively on her back, causing a sudden heat across her body.
Eve licked her lips nervously.
“You are…you must be…Talos Xenakis?” she ventured, waiting for him to deny it. Almost hoping he would, and that her real boyfriend, the kind-faced man with the gentle eyes, would walk through the door.
The Greek tycoon’s hands on her back paused.
“So you do recognize me.”
She shook her head. “No. Your two employees…the doctor…they told me your name. They said you were on your way.”
He looked down at her, searching her face.
“Dr. Bartlett told me you had amnesia. I didn’t believe it. But it’s true, isn’t it? You really don’t remember me.”
She could only imagine how that must hurt him! “I’m sorry,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “I keep trying, but the first thing I can remember is your employee—Kefalas?—pulling me from my car. It was a lucky thing they were in the car behind me!”
His lips seemed to curve imperceptibly. “Yes. Very lucky.” He sat up straight. “You will be leaving the hospital today.”
She took a deep breath. “Today?”
“Right now.”
“But…” She bit her lip then blurted out, “But I still can’t remember anything! I hoped when I saw you…”
“You hoped seeing me would bring your memory back?”
She nodded miserably. There was no point in feeling disappointed, she told herself fiercely, or making him feel more badly about it than he must already!
But she couldn’t stop the lump in her throat. She’d been counting on the idea that when she saw the face of the man she loved, the man who loved her, her amnesia would end.
Unless they didn’t love each other, she thought suddenly. Unless she’d gotten pregnant by a man who was barely more than a one-night stand.
“I’m sure you must feel so hurt,” she said, trying to push away her sudden fear. She said haltingly, “I can only imagine how it must feel, to love someone who can’t remember you.”
Do you love me? she thought desperately, trying to read his face. Do I love you?
“Shhh. It’s all right.” Lowering his head, he kissed her tenderly on the forehead. The warmth of his nearness was like the summer sun on a winter’s day. Then he lifted her chin, and his dark eyes whipped through her like a blast of heat. “Don’t worry, Eve. In time, you will remember—everything.”
Looking into his face gratefully, Eve realized that her first impression of him had been utterly wrong. He wasn’t cruel. He was kind. How else to explain the fact that he could be so gentle and patient and loving, pushing aside his own hurt to focus only on her?
She took a deep breath. She would be as brave as he was. Pushing the blankets aside, she said over the lump in her throat, “I’ll get dressed to go.”
He stopped her. “Wait. There’s something else we need to talk about.”
She knew instantly what he meant to discuss. And without the barrier of blankets between them, in just her paper-thin hospital gown, she felt painfully bare, vulnerable in every way. She yanked the blankets back over her body, tugging them halfway to her neck.
“He told you, didn’t he?” she whispered.
His voice was low, almost grim. “Yes.”
“Are you happy?” Her voice trembled. “About the news?”
She held her breath as his darkly handsome face stared down at her. When he finally spoke, his voice was charged with some emotion she didn’t recognize.
“I was surprised.”
She searched his gaze. “So the baby wasn’t something we planned?”
His hands tightened, twisting the blanket in his grip. He glanced down at it, then looked at her.
“I’ve never seen you like this,” he said in a low voice. His black gaze hungrily caressed her face. With his fingertips, he brushed some dark tendrils from her cheek. “No makeup. Bare.”
She tried to pull away. “I’m sure I look terrible.”
But he drew her closer. His eyes were dark as he looked down at her, making her shiver from deep within.
“Are you happy about the baby?” she said softly.
He put his arms around her. “I’m going to take good care of you.”
Why wouldn’t he answer? She swallowed, then lifted her head to give him a weak smile. “Don’t worry, I’m not an invalid. I hope the amnesia will disappear in a day or two. Dr. Bartlett said something about a specialist—”
His arms tightened around her, cradling her against his hard chest.
“You don’t need another doctor,” he said roughly. “You just need to come home with me.”
She could feel the beat of his heart against her cheek through his black button-down shirt. She was enveloped in his masculine scent, sandalwood and amber, exotic and woodsy. Against her will, she closed her eyes. She breathed in his smell, heard the beat of his heart, felt his warmth.
Everything else faded. The private hospital room, the nurses and doctor visible through the window of the door, the sound of one of Talos’s men speaking urgently into his cell phone in some language she didn’t recognize, the antiseptic smell, the beeps of the machines…it all faded.
There was only this.
Only him.
Held securely in his strong arms, for the first time since her accident she felt safe and loved. She felt as if she had a place in the world. With him.
He kissed her hair softly. She felt the warmth of his breath, the hot caress of his lips, and a tremble went over her. Fear? Longing?
Did he love her?
She reached upward, cupping his rough jawline with her hands. Though his clothes were sharply pressed, the dark shadow on his chin suggested he’d changed clothes on the plane without bothering to shave. He’d rushed here from Australia. He’d flown all night.
Did that mean love?
“Why didn’t you come to London with me for my stepfather’s funeral?” she said slowly.
He paused. When he spoke, he seemed to choose his words with care.
“I was busy in Sydney acquiring a new company. Believe me,” he said, “I never wanted to be away from you for this long.”
Eve felt there was something he wasn’t telling her. Or was that just her own confusion playing tricks on her? She couldn’t trust anything in this hazy, empty world, not even her own mind! “But why—”
“You are so beautiful, Eve,” he said, cupping her face. He exhaled in a rush. “I almost feared I’d never see your face again.”
“When you heard about the accident, you mean? You were worried about me?” she said in a small voice. When he didn’t answer, she licked her lips. With a deep breath, she asked the question that had been burning through her. “Because we love each other?”
His jaw clenched as he took a deep breath.
“You were a virgin when I seduced you, Eve,” he said in a low voice. “You’d never been with any man before I took you to my bed three months ago.”
She’d been a virgin?
A wave of relief washed over her. Learning she was pregnant by a boyfriend she couldn’t remember had been a tremendous shock. She’d wondered why they weren’t married—wondered all sorts of things. But if Talos had been her one and only lover, if she’d been a virgin at twenty-five, surely that said something about her character?
But did it also mean love?
She looked up into his handsome face, opening her mouth to ask again, Do I love you? Do you love me?
Then she stopped.
There was something beneath his darkly penetrating eyes. Something he wasn’t saying. Something hidden beneath his words.
But before she could understand what her intuition was telling her, Talos placed his broad hands over hers. The warmth of his fingers burned her, intertwined with her own. Trapping her, but not against her will. Her heart pounded faster.
“Get ready to leave.” He lowered his head to kiss her on the temple, running his hands up and down her bare forearms. “I want to take you home.”
Her breathing became short and shallow as he touched her skin. Little prickles of sensation sped up her arms, down her back, making her hair stand on end. The tingle swirled across her earlobes, down her neck, making her naked breasts beneath her thin hospital gown suddenly feel tight and full. She tried to remember the question she’d been asking, but it had already swept from her mind.
“All right,” she breathed, looking up into his handsome face.
Gallantly, he helped her from the bed, lifting her gently to her feet. She was more aware than ever of how much taller he was, how much more powerful. He was at least six inches taller, with an extra hundred pounds of pure muscle. Looking up at him, she forgot everything but her own longing and fascinated desire for the man towering over her like a dark angel.
“I’m sorry it took so long for me to reach you, Eve,” he said in a low voice. “But I’m here now.” He kissed her head softly, his arms tightening around her as he pulled her into an embrace. “And I’m never going to let you go.”
CHAPTER TWO
BENEATH heavily lidded eyes, Talos watched Eve as he led her to the black Rolls-Royce purring on the street in front of the hospital.
She wasn’t faking her amnesia. In spite of his initial incredulity, he now had no doubt. She had no idea of who he was or what she’d done.
And now she was pregnant with his child.
That changed everything.
He gently helped her to the car. She had no luggage. One of his men had taken her smashed Aston-Martin to the garage, while the other had gone to make quiet amends for the smashed postbox. She wore the black silk dress and carried the black clutch purse from her stepfather’s funeral yesterday.
The black dress clung to her breasts and hips when she walked, the silk shimmering and sliding against her hips and breasts. Her dark, glossy hair had been brushed into a fresh ponytail.
She wore no makeup. It made her look different. Talos had never known her to go out without lipstick before—although God knew, with her lustrous skin, full pink lips and sparkling blue eyes, she didn’t need it to cause every man she met, from the elderly hospital porter to the teenaged boy walking past them on the sidewalk, to stop and catch his breath.
And as she turned back to face him on the sidewalk with a sweetly innocent smile, Talos was grimly aware that he was far from immune to her charm.
“Where are we going?” she asked, crinkling her forehead. “You never said.”
“Home,” he replied, guiding her into the backseat of the limousine. He closed the door behind her.
His body’s reaction to her was irritating—and troubling. He didn’t like it. Because he hated her.
When he’d first seen Eve in the hospital, she’d been curled up on the single bed beneath a thick blanket. She’d looked pale and wan, nothing like the vivacious, tempestuous vixen he remembered. Sleeping, she’d looked innocent, far younger than her twenty-five years.
She’d looked small. Fragile.
Talos had come to London specifically to destroy her. For the last three months, he’d been dreaming of it.
But how could he take his revenge if she not only had no memory of her crimes, but she was pregnant with his baby?
Tightening his hands into fists, he stalked to the other side of the car. Though it was only September, summer had abruptly fled London. A steady drizzle was falling from low gray clouds.
He climbed in beside her and she turned to him without missing a beat. “Where is our home?”
“My home—” he closed his door with a bang “—is Athens.”
She gaped at him. “Athens?”
“It’s where I live, and I must take care of you.” He gave her a brief, tight smile. “Doctor’s orders.”
“So I live there with you?”
“No.”
“We don’t live together?”
“You like to travel,” he said ironically.
“So where are my clothes?” she said in a small voice. “And my passport?”
“Likely at your stepfather’s estate. My staff will collect your things and meet us at the airport.”
“But…” She looked out the window, then turned back to face him and said in a rush, lifting her chin, “I want to see my home. My childhood home. Where is it?”
He gave her an assessing glance. “Your stepfather’s estate is in Buckinghamshire, I believe. But visiting there won’t help you. You spent one night there before the funeral. It hasn’t been your home for a long time.”
“Please, Talos.” Her sapphire eyes gleamed. “I want to see my home.”
His brow furrowed as he looked down at her pleading face.
Eve really had changed, he thought. His mistress had never begged him for anything. She’d never even said please.
Except…
Except for the first night he’d taken her to his bed, when all her defenses had been briefly stripped away and he’d discovered the most desired woman in the world was, against all expectations, a virgin. As he’d pushed himself inside her, she’d looked up at him in a breathless hush with those violet-blue eyes, and he’d thought…he’d almost thought…
He cut off the memory savagely.
He wouldn’t think about how it had once been with her. He wouldn’t think how she had nearly made him lose everything, including his mind.
Eve Craig was a fatal habit that he’d finally broken—and he intended to keep it that way.
“Very well,” he ground out, turning back to face her. “I will take you home—but just to collect your things. We cannot stay.”
Her lovely face brightened. She looked so young without makeup, with her hair in the casual ponytail. She looked barely old enough to be in college, far younger than his own thirty-eight years.
“Thank you,” she said warmly.
Thank you. Another phrase he’d never heard from her before.
He turned away, leaning back in the beige leather seat as his chauffeur drove smoothly through the city, turning right from Marylebone to the Edgware Road. As the car merged onto the M1 heading north, Talos stared out at the passing rain, then closed his eyes, tense and weary from jet lag and the whiplash of the past two days.
Eve, pregnant.
He was still reeling.
No wonder she’d crashed her car, he thought dully. Just the thought of losing her figure and not fitting into all her designer clothes must have made her crazy. All those months of not being able to drink champagne and dance till dawn with all of her rich, beautiful, shallow friends? Eve must have been more than shocked—she must have been furious.
Eve, pregnant.
He would not trust her to take care of a house plant, much less a child. She was not even slightly maternal. She wouldn’t love a baby. She was the least loving person Talos had ever met.
Slowly, he opened his eyes.
He hadn’t even known about the baby an hour ago, but now he was absolutely sure of one thing.
He had to protect his child.
“So I don’t live in England,” he heard her say. Steeling his expression, he turned to face her. Her face looked bewildered, almost sad as she added hesitantly, “I don’t have a home?”
Home. Against his will, he had the sudden image of Eve in his bedroom at Mithridos, spread across his large bed, with the curtains twisting from the sea breeze coming off the sparkling Aegean. That had never happened, and it never would!
“You live in hotels,” he answered coldly. “I told you. You travel constantly.”
“So how do I hold down a job?” she said in disbelief.
“You don’t. You spend your days shopping and attending parties around the world. You’re an heiress. A famous beauty.”
She gaped at him. “You’re joking.”
“No.” He left it at that. He could hardly explain how she and her dissolute friends traveled in packs like parasites, sucking a luxury hotel dry before moving on to the next. If he told her that, she might hear the scorn in his voice and question the true nature of his feelings.
Malakas, how was it possible that he’d been so caught by her? What madness had possessed him to be so enslaved?
How could he make sure that his child never was neglected, hurt or abandoned by her after she regained her memory?
A new thought suddenly occurred to him.
If she could not remember him, if she could not remember who she was or what she’d done, it meant she would have no idea of what was about to hit her. She would have no defenses.
A slow smile curved his lips as he built his new plan. He could take everything from her, including their baby. And she would never see it coming.
“So I was here for my stepfather’s funeral,” she said softly. “But I’m not British.”
“Your mother was, I believe. You both returned to England some years ago.”
She brightened. “My mother!”
“Dead,” he informed her brutally.
She froze, her face crumpling. Watching the swift movement of scenery on the outskirts of London through the window behind her, he remembered that her mother’s death was fresh news to her. And that he was supposed to be in love with her. He had to make her believe that if he wanted his plan to succeed.
“I’m sorry, Eve,” he said abruptly. “But as far as I know, you have no family.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice.
Pulling her into his arms, he held her close against his chest, kissing the top of her head. Her hair, messy and unwashed, still managed to smell like vanilla and sugar, the scents he associated with her. The scent that immediately made his body go hard and taut with longing, with the immediate temptation of a long-desired vice.
Thee mou. Why couldn’t he stop wanting her? After everything she’d done, the way she’d nearly ruined him, how was it possible that his body still longed for her like a dying man thirsting for water? Was he really such a suicidal fool? Did he have no honor, no pride?
He had pride, he thought, clenching his jaw. It was her. Even now, acting so sweetly demure, her innocence attracted him like a flame. He remembered the fire of passion inside her. And how he was the only man who’d ever tasted it.
He felt himself tighten.
Stop! he ordered himself. He wouldn’t think about her in bed. He wouldn’t want her. He did have some control over his own body, damn it!
She clenched her fingers against his sleeve, her face pressed into his crisply tailored shirt.
“So I have no one.” Her voice was small, almost a whisper. “No parents. No brothers or sisters. No one.”
He looked down at her, tipping her chin upwards so he could see the tears sparkling in her beautiful violet-blue eyes. “You have me.”
She swallowed, searching his face as if trying to read the emotion behind his expression. He schooled his features into concern and admiration and the closest attempt at love he could manage, never having actually felt it.
A sigh came from her lips as she exhaled. A soft smile traced her lips. “And our baby.”
He gave a single grim nod. Their baby was the reason he had to make sure his control over Eve was absolute. The reason he had to make her believe he cared about her.
It was no different, he thought sardonically, than she’d once done to him. He would lull her into believing she could trust him. Make her willingly marry him.
Then—oh, then…
The instant their marriage was final, his life’s goal would be to make her remember the truth. He would be with her when she finally remembered. He would see her face as it fell.
And he would crush her. The thought of revenge made his heart glad.
Not revenge, he told himself. Justice.
Leaning forward, he held her closer in the backseat of the Rolls-Royce.
“Eve.” He cupped her face in his large hands. “I want you to marry me.”
Marry him?
Yes, Eve thought in a daze, looking up into his handsome face. Feeling his strong, rough hands against the softness of her skin, the warmth of his touch seared her, tracing down her neck to her breasts and lower still.
How could any man be so masculine, so beautiful, so powerful all at once? Talos was everything her tattered, empty, frightened soul had desired. He would protect her. Love her. He would complete her life.
Yes, yes, yes.
But even as the words rose to her lips, something stopped her. Something she couldn’t understand made her pull her face away from his touch.
“Marry you?” she whispered. She searched his dark eyes, her heartbeat quickening in her chest. “I don’t even know you.”
He blinked. She saw that he was surprised. Then his eyebrows lowered into a frown.
“You knew me well enough to conceive my child.”
She swallowed. “But I can’t remember you,” she said. “It wouldn’t be fair to take you as my husband. It wouldn’t be right.”
“I was raised without a father. I do not intend my child to endure that. I will give our baby a name. Do not deny me,” he said urgently.
Deny him? How could any woman deny anything to a man like Talos Xenakis?
But it didn’t feel right.
With a deep breath, she turned away, glancing out at the passing scenery. It had changed since they’d left the outskirts of London, become soft and green beyond the rain-splattered windows. Trees had started to turn orange and yellow, rich autumnal colors between the green.
“Eve.”
She looked back at Talos. He was so darkly handsome and powerful, and at the moment his sensual mouth was pressed into a hard line. He was clearly determined to have his way.
But something inside her made her resist him.
“Thank you for asking me to marry you,” she said awkwardly. “It’s very warm and loving. But my baby won’t be born for months—”
“Our baby,” he corrected her.
“And I can’t be your wife when I can’t even remember you.”
“We’ll see,” he said softly. Silence fell on their drive as she watched the passing scenery. Finally, the car turned off the road to a smaller lane. She saw a redbrick Georgian mansion at the base of tree-covered hills, reflected in a wide gray lake.
“Is that my stepfather’s house?” she breathed in shock.
“Yes.”
The car drove up the long lane through the park and woodlands then stopped in front of the entrance. As Talos opened the door and helped her from the car, Eve looked up with an intake of breath. She craned her head back to get a good look at the mansion, with its striking Victorian Gothic parapets stabbing upward into the steel-gray sky.
Holding her hand over her eyes to block out the noon sunlight that had finally penetrated the clouds, she looked back at him. “I lived here as a teenager?”
“And now it is yours, along with a vast fortune.”
She looked at him sharply. “How do you know?”
“You knew it yourself yesterday, when you attended the reading of the will.”
“But how do you know?” she persisted.
He shrugged. “I’ll make sure you get a copy of the will. Come.” Taking her hand, he escorted her past the grand sweep of the front door. Inside the foyer, five servants waited to greet her, headed by the housekeeper.
“Oh, Miss Craig,” the plump woman sniffed into her apron. “Your stepfather loved you so much. He would be so glad to see you’ve finally come home!”
Home? But it wasn’t her home. Apparently, she’d barely set foot in this place for years!
But looking at the elderly housekeeper’s sad face, Eve felt a sympathetic pang. She put an arm around her.
“He was a good man, wasn’t he?” she said softly.
“Yes, that he was, miss. The best. And he loved you as his own natural-born child. Even though you weren’t, and American to boot,” she added, wiping her eyes. “He’d be so happy you’ve finally come back after so long.”
Eve paused delicately. “Has it been so…?”
“Six, no, seven years. Mr. Craig always invited you back for Christmas, but…”
Her voice trailed off as she wiped tears with her apron.
“But I never came, did I?” Eve said.
The older woman shook her head wistfully.
Eve swallowed. Apparently she’d taken her stepfather’s money and let him pay her bills as she shopped and partied her way around the world, but hadn’t even had the grace to return for an occasional visit!
And now he was dead.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered over the lump in her throat.
“Let me take you to your room. You’ll find it’s just as you left it last.”
Shortly afterwards, the quietly sobbing housekeeper left them in Eve’s old bedroom. In the darkness, with Talos behind her in the only light of the double doorway, Eve yanked back the black curtains, filling the room with gray light.
Turning back to get a good look at her room, she choked back a gasp of dismay. Everything was red and black, down to the king-sized black lacquer bed. Dramatic. Modern. Sexy.
Garish.
Talos leaned against the door frame as Eve looked through the room, desperate for something, anything that would tell her what she needed to know. She opened closet doors, running her hands idly over the new clothes that hung there. The clothes were like the room, sexy and dramatic. Powerful clothes for a woman who desired attention and knew how to wield it.
Eve shivered.
She pulled open the shelves, touching each item lightly with her hands. Black stiletto heels. A Gucci handbag. A Louis Vuitton suitcase. Finding her passport, she thumbed through it, searching for answers that weren’t there. Zanzibar? Mumbai? Cape Town?
“You weren’t kidding,” she said slowly. “I do travel constantly. Especially for the last three months.”
When he didn’t reply, she turned back to face him. His face seemed carefully expressionless.
“Yes,” was all he said. “I know.”
She tossed the passport into her suitcase with the sexy clothes and shoes that all seemed foreign, as if they belonged to someone else. Leaning against the modern black four-poster bed, she looked around her with a heavy sigh. “There’s nothing here.”
“I told you.”
Desolately, she went to the bookshelf. It held only faded fashion magazines, years out of date, and a few slender volumes on etiquette and charm. She picked up the book on top, a splashy pop-culture book and read the title out loud in dismay. “How to Get Your Man?”
“That’s never been your problem.” There was a distinct edge to his voice.
Her heart was breaking, and he was making jokes? She made a huffing sound and chucked the book in his general direction. He caught it midair.
“Look, Eve,” he said evenly. “It all doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter—these things tell me who I am!” She jabbed her finger toward the closet. “I’ve just found out I was the kind of girl who only cared about her looks, who ignored a stepfather who loved me, and who never bothered to come home at Christmas.” Tears rushed into her eyes. “And I let him die alone,” she whispered. “How could I have been so cruel?”
Desolately, she picked up a dusty photo in a gilded frame. She saw the image of a man giving a cheeky wink, his arm around a beautiful dark-haired woman who was laughing with joy. Between them was a plump little girl with a big beaming smile and two missing front teeth.
She stared at the adults in the photo for a very long time, but no memories came back to her. They had to be her parents, but she couldn’t remember them. Was she really that heartless? Did she truly have no soul?
“What did you find?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t help.” She threw the photograph across the room, where it bounced softly against her bed. She covered her face with her hands. “I can’t remember them. I can’t!”
Crossing the bedroom in three long strides, he took her by the shoulders. “I barely knew my parents, but it hasn’t hurt me.”
“It’s not just the past,” she whispered. “Why would you want to be with a person like me? Without substance, without heart?”
He didn’t answer.
“And now it’s all too late,” she said over the lump in her throat. “I’ve lost my only family. I have no home.”
“Your home is with me,” he said in a low voice.
She looked up at him. The sunlight from the tall windows gently caressed his face, illuminating floating dust motes like tiny stars all around them in the red-and-black bedroom.
“Let me show you.” He slowly stroked up her bare arms, his fingers light against her skin. “Marry me.”
Electricity spread up her arms and down her body. She fought the urge to step closer to him, to press her body against his chest. Shaking her head, she breathed, “I can’t.”
“Why?” he growled.
“I don’t want you to marry me out of pity!”
His hands suddenly moved around her, caressing her back through her dress, causing the black silk to slide deliciously over her body with his featherlight touch. “Pity is the last thing I feel for you.”
She closed her eyes, leaning forward in spite of herself. Wanting more of his touch. Wanting to feel his warmth. His heat.
He pulled her more deeply into his arms. She felt the scent of him, the warmth of his body beneath his clothes.
“Come away with me,” he whispered into her hair. “Come to Athens and be my bride.”
She felt the hardness of his body against hers, the strength of his arms around her. He was so much taller and more powerful than she was. His hands ran softly along the edges of her hips, up the length of her back as her breasts crushed against his chest.
She swallowed, trembling. She licked her lips, moving her cheek against his shirt as she looked up at him. “I can’t just run away,” she sighed. No matter how she wished she could. “I need my memory back, Talos. I can’t just float through the world not knowing who I am. I can’t marry a virtual stranger, even if you’re the father of my child—”
“So I’ll take you to the place where we first met. To where we began.” She felt his dark gaze fall upon her mouth as he said softly, “I’ll show you the place where I first kissed you.”
Her bones turned to liquid. She looked up at him, her heart pounding as she licked her lips involuntarily. “Where is that?”
His eyes were hot and dark. “In Venice.”
“Venice,” she repeated, and the word was a wistful sigh. She looked up at him with yearning, knowing she should refuse—knowing she should stay in London and see the specialist Dr. Bartlett had recommended. But her refusal caught in her throat. Caught by her romantic dreams. Caught by him.
Talos reached down to stroke her tender bottom lip with his thumb, caressing her face with his powerful hands.
“Come to Venice,” he said darkly. “I will show you everything.” He cupped her face with both hands, holding her hard against his body as he looked down at her, commanding her with his gaze. “And then,” he whispered, “you will marry me.”
CHAPTER THREE
SUNLIGHT reflected off the water as they took the motoscafo, a private water taxi, from the Marco Polo Airport. The September weather was bright and warm as they crossed the lagoon, passing by the Piazza San Marco and the Bridge of Sighs on the way to their hotel.
Venice. Talos had never expected to return here again.
But sometimes, he thought grimly, a man had to change the playbook in the middle of the game. He would do whatever it took, be as romantic a fool as any man could be, in order to lure Eve into marriage before her memory returned.
He looked down at her in his arms as they crossed the water of the canal. Her eyes shone with wonder, her full pink lips were slightly parted as she gazed around the city with awe.
The same way every man who saw Eve looked at her.
Even right now in this water taxi. The young Italian driver kept glancing back in his mirror. Talos’s bodyguard, Kefalas, was sitting in the seat behind them, and even he had looked at Eve a bit longer than strictly necessary.
Eve was freshly showered and had changed her clothes on his private flight from London. Her dark hair now fell in thick, glossy waves past her bare shoulders, brushing the nipples Talos could easily picture beneath that clinging red jersey dress. The dress showed off the top swell of her overflowing breasts beneath the spaghetti straps, and barely reached halfway down her creamy thighs. She’d put on lipstick, a red color that matched her dress. Her legs were slender and perfect, ending in sharp black stiletto heels.
He couldn’t blame either of them for staring. Even though he wanted to kill them for it.
Strange, Talos thought, he’d never been jealous before of other men staring at Eve. He’d always accepted it as his due. He’d taken it for granted that other men would always want what he, Talos, possessed.
But for the first time it caused his stomach to curl. Why? Because Eve was carrying his child? Because he intended to make her his wife?
His wife in name only, he reminded himself. To protect his unborn child. Not because he cared for Eve. He felt nothing for her but scorn. And, he was forced to admit, lust.
Giving the driver a hard stare until the young man blushed and returned his focus to the wheel, Talos pulled Eve closer against him on the seat. She leaned back against his chest, reaching her arms over his neck and smiling up at him.
“It’s beautiful here.” Her blue eyes were as warm as bluebells in a spring meadow. “Thank you for bringing me to Venice. Even though I’m sure it was very inconvenient…”
He smiled down at her. Taking her hand, he brought it to his lips.
“Nothing is inconvenient to me if it gives you pleasure,” he said, and softly pressed his mouth against her skin.
He felt her shiver beneath his touch in the warm afternoon sun. The air was salty and fresh. In the distance, he could hear the calls of seagulls, hear the distant chiming of medieval church bells.
“You’re so good to me,” she whispered, visibly affected by the way he’d kissed her hand. The realization that she was almost like an innocent, easily swayed by sensual desire, lit a dark fire in his heart.
The femme fatale she’d once been had disappeared along with her memories, it seemed. Dressed in the red dress and lipstick she still looked just like the same arrogant, cruel, fascinating creature she’d been three months ago, but she’d changed completely. With her skittish reactions, her youthful naïveté, she was almost like a virgin.
Except she wasn’t—she was pregnant with his baby. And while she’d certainly been a virgin before they’d met, she’d never been innocent!
Remembering how they’d conceived that baby, all of his limbs suddenly seemed to burn where he had contact with her. Looking down into her beautiful face, he saw the vulnerability in her blue eyes, saw her pupils dilate. He was reminded of those hot breathless weeks in Athens when her naked body had been beneath his own. When he’d thought that beneath her achingly beautiful, shallow surface something existed that might be truly rare—truly worth possessing.
And he’d kept right on thinking that up until the day he’d seen her having breakfast with his rival, coldly giving him evidence to destroy Talos’s company.
Remember that moment, he told himself harshly. Remember how she betrayed you—and why.
But as Eve looked up at him dreamily beneath the elegant, decrepit palazzos of Venice, with the sunlight shining off the canals, all he could suddenly think was that he wanted to kiss her. Now. Hard. To brand her permanently as his, to punish those cherry-red lips until she gasped and cried out in his arms.
His hands tightened around her shoulders, his fingers gripping into her slight frame as he remembered their days and nights in June. He’d been addicted to bedding her. He’d been lost in a woman, in a way he’d never experienced before or since.
He considered himself ruthless. He considered himself strong. But she’d bested him and he’d never seen it coming.
Now, he hated her with all his heart.
But he still wanted her. Wanted her with a consuming desire that could destroy him, if he ever let down his guard.
He would never give in to her temptation. Even if his weeks of bedding her had been the most erotically charged experience of his life, he would never take her again. If he ever even kissed her, he might be lighting a flame that he could not control.
He watched her nervously lick her lips—those full, cherry-red lips that had once made him shudder and scream with desire so intense he’d literally thought it might kill him.
He could tell she was bewildered by the electric connection between them. She didn’t understand it. Unlike the Eve he’d known, who’d kept her feelings so carefully hidden, this girl didn’t guard her expression. Her thoughts were clearly bare on her angelically beautiful face.
Good, he told himself harshly. The perfect weapon to use against her. He would convince her to marry him. He would romance her. Woo her. Court her. Lure her. He would take her as his wife—today. By any means necessary.
Except one.
He would not take her to his bed. He would not.
Eve turned her face up toward the bright Italian sun from the windows of the boat, leaning back against Talos’s strong, powerful body as the motoscafo bounced across the waves. The leather seat hummed beneath her thighs from the vibrations of the engine.
She took a deep breath of the sharp, salty air. Her skin felt warm. Her body felt hot all over as she leaned against Talos’s hard chest. Even through his black shirt she could feel the heat off his skin.
Then he smiled down at her. His smile did all kinds of strange things to her, making her heart pound. Her days of darkness and emptiness in rainy London now seemed like a lonely dream. She was in Italy with Talos. And their baby. She placed her hand on her still-flat belly.
The water taxi slowed, pulled near the dock of a fifteenth-century palazzo. She stared at the high pointed windows that embellished the crumbling red stucco facade with awe at its exotic Gothic beauty. “Is that where we’re going?”
His black eyes gleamed as he looked down at her. “Our hotel.”
Oh. Their hotel.
She swallowed as she climbed from the taxi to the dock, picturing what it would be like to share a room with this man. To share space. To share a bed.
Just thinking of it, she stumbled on the dock.
“Careful,” Talos said gruffly, grabbing her arm to steady her. “You don’t have your sea legs yet.”
All the colors of Venice, the twisting, sparkling water, the bright blue sky and tall, red campanile tower of the nearby piazza, seemed to fade into the background with a swirl of color behind him.
“You’re right,” she said over the lump in her throat. “I don’t.”
They stood on the dock as his bodyguard-assistant, Kefalas, paid the young Italian taxi driver and organized the luggage. But all Eve could see was Talos.
He was so handsome and tall and strong, she thought. She felt his arms tighten around her, and she suddenly wondered if he was going to kiss her. The thought scared her. She jerked away from him nervously. “We will, um, get separate rooms, won’t we?”
She heard a low, sensual laugh escape him as he shook his head.
She licked her lips. “But—”
“I don’t intend to let you out of my sight.” He came forward toward her on the dock, and it took every ounce of her courage not to back away. He loosely brushed a tendril back from the blowing salty breeze. Kissing her temple, he whispered, “Or out of my arms.”
Enfolding her hand in his own, he drew her toward the palatial hotel, where they were whisked inside by the waiting staff.
As Eve walked through the exquisite lobby, past soaring gilded arches and the sweeping staircase, she became slowly aware of men’s heads whipping around to stare at her, almost like spectators following a tennis match.
It would have been funny, if she hadn’t felt like the yellow ball.
Why were they staring at her?
What was wrong with her?
The doorman gaped at her, then jumped to open the door.
The male clerk did a double take from the elaborate desk before he looked away, clearing his throat.
The group of Italian businessmen crossing the lobby weren’t so discreet. Three young men in pinstriped suits stopped in place on the marble floor, staring at her with open jaws. One man jabbed another in the ribs with a grin. Speaking rapidly in Italian, he started to come toward her. His friend stopped him by grabbing his wrist, gesturing toward Talos with palpable fear. Apparently too cowed by Talos to approach her, all three men continued to stare at her, murmuring soft words of appreciation.
Eve felt vulnerable.
Exposed.
Her cheeks went hot beneath all the scrutiny. She was grateful when Talos took her hand and led her toward the elevator. She could feel all the men in the lobby stare after her, hear their mournful sighs meld with the click of her stiletto heels on the marble floor. They were probably staring at her backside right now.
Her neck broke out into a cold sweat.
Why were they staring at her?
Then in a flash, she knew.
The dress.
The tiny red dress that she’d taken from her bedroom closet in Buckinghamshire. Compared to the rest of the wardrobe, she’d thought it the simplest, easiest choice, comfortable and casual. It had seemed like a nice, though somewhat small, sundress in stretchy fabric. And since she apparently owned no comfortable shoes whatsoever, she’d chosen the black stiletto sandals, which at least wouldn’t squeeze her toes. After her shower, she’d brushed out her dark hair and tentatively put on the lipstick in her handbag.
She’d hoped she would get used to her own clothes, feel confident in them.
Boy, had she been wrong.
Though the knit fabric was indeed soft and stretchy, it was no match for her pregnant breasts, which spilled out quite distressingly over the top. The stiletto heels made her legs very long but also caused her hips to thrust forward and sway with every commanding step.
Comfortable? Casual?
Her clothes cried out for male attention, and no matter where they went, men’s eyes centered on her. No matter their nationality, no matter their age or profession, men couldn’t stop staring!
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Дженни Лукас
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: From poverty to power – this Greek tycoon claims his baby!American beauty Eve Craig fell under the spell of powerful Talos Xenakis in a hot-blooded Athens encounter… Three months later and Eve has lost her innocence – and her memory! But she has aroused Talos’s desire and his anger – she has betrayed him. So what better way to punish the woman who nearly ruined him than marry – and destroy – her…? Only she’s now carrying his love-child…