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Chosen by the Greek Tycoon: The Antonakos Marriage / At the Greek Tycoon's Bidding / The Greek's Bridal Purchase
Kate Walker

Susan Stephens

CATHY WILLIAMS


The Antonakos Marriage by Kate Walker Theo Antonakos is furious when Skye slips away from his bed without a word. Then he arrives on his family's Greek island to meet his stepmother-to-be and discovers they already know each other ; intimately! He wants Skye back in his bed. . .At the Greek Tycoon's Bidding by Cathy Williams Heather is different from the wealthy Greek tycoon's usual women: frumpy, too talkative and his office cleaner! Yet there's passion in her. Will she be at her boss's beck and call. . . all night?The Greek's Bridal Purchase by Susan Stephens Shy musician Miranda is stunned when billionaire Theo Savakis pursues her. What can he want with her? Theo needs a wife or he'll forfeit his inheritance, and Miranda is perfect. But Theo hasn't told Miranda the truth!









Chosen by the

Greek Tycoon


Men who have everything—except brides…

Three glittering, passionate romances from

three favourite Mills & Boon authors!


In October 2009 Mills & Boon bringyou two classic collections, eachfeaturing three favourite romancesby our bestselling authors

CHOSEN BY THEGREEK TYCOONThe Antonakos Marriage by Kate Walker At the Greek Tycoon’s Bidding by Cathy Williams The Greek’s Bridal Purchase by Susan Stephens

THE PRINCE BROTHERS:SATISFACTION GUARANTEED! by Carole Mortimer Prince’s PassionPrince’s PleasurePrince’s Love-Child




Chosen by the Greek Tycoon

KATE WALKER

CATHY WILLIAMS

SUSAN STEPHENS









MILLS & BOON




www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/)



THE ANTONAKOS MARRIAGE


Kate Walker was born in Nottinghamshire, but as she grew up in Yorkshire she has always felt that her roots are there. She met her husband at university, and originally worked as a children’s librarian, but after the birth of her son she returned to her old childhood love of writing. When she’s not working, she divides her time between her family, their three cats, and her interests of embroidery, antiques, film and theatre, and, of course, reading.

You can visit Kate at www.kate-walker.com




CHAPTER ONE


THEO ANTONAKOS was not in the least impressed to learn that he was about to get a new stepmother.

He had never come to terms with his father’s reputation with women. He’d lost count of the number of lovers who had drifted through the older man’s life since his own mother’s death and become, for a time, surrogate materas to him while he was growing up. Not one of them had stayed, though three of them had become Cyril’s wife for a while, usually a very brief time.

Now it seemed that the fifth Mrs Antonakos was about to make her appearance. Quite frankly, Theo didn’t hold out much expectation that she would last any longer than any of her predecessors, but she was indirectly responsible for the restlessness and the unsettled mood that were eating at him tonight.

He reached for his glass of wine and drained the rich red liquid from the bottom of it, slamming the glass back down on the table top with a crash that revealed the turmoil of his inner feelings.

He usually loved London’s bustling vibrancy, the sense of people going places, living busy lives. The crowded streets, the lights, the hum of cars, reminded him of his home in Athens, the city life he had there, the cut and thrust of the business world that made every day a challenge he enjoyed.

But when it was dark and damp and cold as it was now on this October evening, then he wished he were anywhere but here. He missed the heat of the Greek sun on his back, the lazy lap of the ocean against the rocks of the island his family owned. He missed the sound of his native language. He missed his family. Hell, he missed home.

It had started with the letter that had arrived that morning.

One look at the stamp with the familiar Greek script had jarred him awake with a speed and roughness that had made his head spin. He hadn’t even needed to check the postmark, or the rough, almost illegible scrawl of the address. He had known immediately just who it was from.

His father had broken his long silence and had written at last.

‘Oh, come on, Red, lighten up. Sit down and have a drink with us!’

The rough-edged, slightly slurred comment followed by a chorus of laughter drifted over to him from across the other side of the bar, making him glance in that direction. A couple of youths were lounging around a table, beer bottles littering the polished surface.

But it was the woman with them who caught his attention. Caught and held it.

He couldn’t see her face because she had her back to him. But what he could see was stunning. Physically, sexually stunning in a way that made desire twist, sharp and hot, in his gut in immediate reaction.

Long hair in a glorious, burnished red gold cascaded down the slender length of her back, gleaming with coppery highlights even under the shaded lamps of the bar. She was tall and shapely: narrow shoulders, neat hips, a pert, tight bottom under the clinging skirt of her black dress.

Skirt? His faint laugh denied the description. That wasn’t a skirt, it was a pelmet—little more than an extended belt, leaving exposed the slim, elegant length of her legs in sheerest black nylon, right down to the point where her feet were pushed into the polished, ridiculously high-heeled shoes.

‘Anything you like, sweetheart…’

There was something about her that compelled him to watch her.

And he had been without a woman too long. That was the real reason he was interested. Ever since Eva had walked out three months ago, there had been no female company in his life.

He could have had plenty—he knew without false modesty that his dark looks attracted female attention and interest. Add to that the appeal of the wealth that came from both his family background and the results of his own efforts, and he rarely had to spend a night alone unless he wanted to.

But lately that knowledge hadn’t satisfied him. He was edgy, wanted more.

Not with Eva, though. That was why they’d argued and why she’d walked. Eva had thought that she was onto a good thing. She had had wedding bells and gold rings in her dreams, and he had had to disillusion her about that pretty forcefully. As a result, she’d left. Eva wasn’t the kind of girl to stay around when she knew she wasn’t going to get what she wanted.

And if he was honest with himself, he really hadn’t missed her.

‘No, really, no thanks.’

Her voice fell into one of those sudden lapses into silence in which even the quietest voice sounded clear and audible in the stillness of the room.

And what a voice! It was low and sensual, surprisingly husky for a woman. It made him imagine hearing that voice whispering to him in the deep, warm darkness of a king-size bed. His mouth dried, his body tightened just to think of it. But the next moment, the sexy mood vanished, the erotic thoughts driven away by a dramatic change in her tone.

‘I said no, thank you.’

Theo was on his feet before he was even aware of having reacted. There had been an edge to her words, a note of unease, of total rejection of the position in which she found herself. She wasn’t happy, it was obvious.

Half a dozen long, forceful strides took him across the room to come up close behind her. Neither she nor the men she was talking to had even noticed him.

Skye Marston knew that she was in trouble.

In fact, she had known it from three heartbeats into the conversation she had foolishly started with these two. She should never have stopped, never responded to their casually friendly greeting on her way into the room.

Their apparently casually friendly greeting.

She had come into the bar on a whim. It had looked crowded, brightly lit and warm, in contrast to the cold wind and driving rain of the street outside. And she had wanted desperately to be with people. She had spent too much time on her own, and being on her own left her vulnerable to her unhappy thoughts.

Was it really less than a month since her father had broken down and admitted that his money problems were far worse than he had let on? That in an attempt to deal with them, he had made a real mess of things by ’borrowing’ from his boss, Greek millionaire Cyril Antonakos, the owner of the hotels he managed—and, even worse, he had now been found out. He faced a lengthy prison sentence if charges were pressed.

‘I can’t go to jail, Skye!’ he had wept. ‘Not now, not with your mother so ill! It would kill her. She just can’t manage without me. You have to help me!’

‘I’ll do anything I can, Dad.’ Skye had reacted instinctively, knowing there was nothing else she could say.

Her mother’s heart condition had been a cause of great concern for some time, but lately her condition had deteriorated. Now it seemed that if the next operation she had didn’t succeed, her only hope was a transplant. ‘Anything at all—though I don’t know what help I can be!’

But her father had known. Cyril Antonakos had already proposed a way out of the terrible trap in which Andrew Marston found himself. And Skye had listened in horror as he had revealed just how vital she was to their scheme. Cyril wanted an heir. To achieve that end, obviously he needed a wife and, as his last marriage had ended in an acrimonious divorce, he had selected Skye as the potential mother of his child. If she married him, gave him the heir he craved, he wouldn’t prosecute.

In order to save Andrew Marston from imprisonment, she was being asked to marry a man older than her father.

And tomorrow she had to give him her answer.

That was why she was here tonight. That was why she was out on her own, spending her one last night of freedom in the impersonal bright lights and busy streets of London. She could only pray that those bright lights—and the crowded bars—were enough to distract her from what tomorrow would bring.

Not giving herself time to reconsider, she had swung into the wide doorway, struggling with the big glass doors, pushing her way through the crowd, trying to reach the bar.

And immediately she had felt that she had made a mistake.

The bar was warm and bright, true. It was also very busy. And everyone there seemed to know someone else. No one was on their own, without anyone else to talk to, to smile at.

And even if they had been alone, she told herself, no one else could ever be quite so lonely, quite so isolated as she felt right now.

She had been about to turn round and go back out when she had spotted the one other person who, like her, was on his own.

Should she—could she—make herself go up and talk to him? That had been her plan from the start. To meet someone and talk to them, so, hopefully, driving away this appalling sense of isolation and loss, melting the cruel block of ice that seemed to surround her world, and giving her some moments of freedom and relaxation before the world closed in on her again.

But this man didn’t look the type who could fulfil that hope for her. He was too big, too dark, too dangerous-looking. His long body lounged in the chair, apparently at ease, but there was an air of menace, of carefully leashed power, about him that made her heart kick inside her chest, so that she caught her breath in shock. His black-haired head was turned away from her, and hooded eyes stared down into a glass half-filled with red wine.

It was almost as if she had come across a sleek, honed hunting cat crouching in wait in some small, shaded jungle clearing. Just seeing him slowed her steps to a halt, making her hesitate and rethink.

And that was when the call from the nearest table had distracted her.

‘Hello, darling. Looking for someone?’

If she hadn’t been so diverted by the appearance of the dark-haired man in the corner, so desperate for company and distraction, Skye would have simply switched on an automatic smile, murmured something about having ’just spotted them, thank you,’ and moved on. But her steps had already slowed, she had stopped beside the table, and somehow she couldn’t find the words to extricate herself.

And they clearly thought that she was with them for the evening—and more. Their smiles, the hot, lascivious way their eyes travelled over her, made her feel uneasy. She might have been looking for a last chance to spend her time as a free, single twenty-two-year-old, but this was not what she’d had in mind.

She tried to turn down the offers of a drink with what she hoped was an apologetic smile, an expression of regret, but she could see that they weren’t appeased. The blond was growing noticeably aggressive, and when she tried to step back and move away she found that his black-haired friend had grabbed her arm and was gripping it in a bruisingly tight hold.

‘So what’s wrong—aren’t we good enough for you?’

‘No—really—I—I’m waiting for someone.’

‘Like who?’ Frank disbelief sounded roughly in his voice.

‘My—my boyfriend. He said—he’d meet me here.’

The blond made an elaborate play of looking around the room, searching for the imaginary boyfriend.

‘Then I think you’ve been stood up, Red. He’s clearly not coming for you.’

The grip on her arm tightened cruelly, pulling her closer so that she had to bend slightly to adjust to the tug on her wrist.

‘He—he’s just late.’

‘Do you know what I think, Red?’

It was a mocking whisper, a malicious gleam lighting in his eyes.

‘I think he’s not coming. In fact, I have this suspicion that you’re telling me lies—that this lover of yours just doesn’t exist.’

‘Oh, but he does.’

Skye jumped like a startled cat as the words came from behind her. The deep, gorgeously accented, sexy male voice was the last thing she had ever anticipated. It was the fantasy she might have wished for—the dream lover turning up to rescue her from the awkward, uncomfortable situation in which she found herself.

But this was no fantasy. The startled gaze of her tormentors had gone from her face to somewhere behind the back of her head, shock and consternation showing in their eyes. The controlling grip on her wrist had loosened, letting her pull free.

‘Oh!’

The soft cry of shock was pushed from her as a pair of tightly muscled arms slid round her waist from behind. A hard, powerful frame was pressed up against her back, its heat and strength reaching right through the material of her jacket, to her skin, her bones—seeming to scorch her soul.

She felt safe, protected, surrounded by this unknown man. His warmth and strength enclosed her, the sound of his breathing tantalised her ears, and the scent of his skin filled her nostrils.

‘Sorry I’m late, darling,’ the husky voice murmured against her neck. ‘You know how these meetings drag on. But I’m here now.’

‘Mmm.’

It was all she could manage and she didn’t care if it sounded more like a sigh of sensual response than any coherent answer.

Her body was tingling all over, burning in instant response to just this unknown man’s touch. She couldn’t see his face—the only parts of his body that were visible to her were the hands that were clasped around her waist.

And they were intensely masculine hands. Big and square and capable-looking. They dwarfed her own smaller, slimmer fingers as they closed warmly over them. No rings. The only adornment was a sleek platinum watch on one wrist, just above an immaculate white shirt cuff, the steelgrey of an elegant and expensive jacket.

‘Forgive me?’

‘Oh, yes!’

How could she say anything else? She would have agreed to anything, accepted anything from him. It was impossible to think straight, and what tiny fragments of thoughts still lingered inside her head were totally shattered, blasted into oblivion by what he did next.

She sensed movement behind her, just out of sight. Felt the brush of silky hair against her cheek, then suddenly there was the press of warm lips against the back of her neck. Her breath caught in her throat; her heart thudded hard against her ribcage, and her head went back against a strong, supportive shoulder, her eyes half closing in sensual response.

‘Hey!’

The stranger’s voice was soft, faintly reproving, edged with a disturbing laughter.

‘Not here, darling,’ he went on wickedly. ‘Better wait until we get home!’

Home! She wasn’t going home with this man…

That brought her back to the present in the blink of an eyelid, her head coming up again sharply, her mouth opening on a gasp of protest. But the protest never had a chance to form because the man behind her spoke again before she had a chance to say a word.

‘Time to go, sweetheart. Say goodbye to your friends.’

It was the way he said friends that alerted her. She had been in danger of giving away their pretence. If she had voiced her protest, she would have made it clear to the men at the table that her rescuer was not the lover she had claimed him as.

‘Goodbye, guys! Th-thanks for keeping me company.’

Just who was this man who had come to her rescue so unexpectedly? The question raged in her mind as she made herself turn, ready to walk off with him, struggling to look as if this were something she did every day.

He slid his hand into hers, lacing his strong fingers with hers, holding her in a way that felt light and gentle, but which she was sure would be even harder to break away from than the dark-haired man’s hold had been.

‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’

He was tall, and strongly built, that much she could tell from the swift, sidelong glances she slanted in his direction, not daring to actually turn and stare. In the shadowy light of the bar, his face was turned from her, eyes fixed on the doorway towards which his determined strides were taking them. She could only let herself be pulled along in his wake, wanting to be well away from her earlier tormentors before she did what she knew she was going to have to do and put the brakes on sharply, saying, ‘This far and no further.’

‘Hang on a minute…’ she tried, but he either didn’t hear or pretended not to. His ruthless path through the bar didn’t falter, and where she had struggled through the crowds on her way in, now they just seemed to part smoothly to let him through.

The next moment they were at the door and moving down the steps into the street.

‘Now hang on!’

She dug her heels in as she spoke, mentally slamming on the brakes and praying that his strength and power wouldn’t just drag her over, tumbling ignominiously down the stone stairs after him.

‘That’s far enough!’

This time her voice reached him. Either that, or the pull on his hand was enough to drag him to a halt. He stopped abruptly, then whirled round, coming to face her, and she saw his features for the first time in the full glow of the light of the street lamps.

She’d seen them before. Seen that strong-boned, forcefully arrogant face. The jet-black, deep-set eyes above slashing cheekbones, the long, straight sweep of a nose, and the fall of rich, thick hair, darker than the night’s shadows around him.

‘You!’

The word escaped on a cry of shock as she recognised the man she had seen at the other side of the bar. The only other person who had been on his own in the busy, noisy room.

The man she had not dared to risk approaching because some intuitive sense of fear had held her back. Her instincts had sprung straight to red alert, flashing warning signs before her eyes and shrieking, ’Danger—keep away! Don’t touch!’ even before she had had a chance to think why. She just knew that something deep and primitive inside her had made her feel that he was someone to be treated with the intense caution with which she might approach a prowling jungle cat if she came face to face with it out hunting.

And seen up close he looked even more so. More dangerous; more devastating. More blatantly masculine. More shockingly attractive—and yet even his undeniable sexual appeal had a worrying core of threat at the bottom of it.

This wasn’t the sort of man she usually encountered. He was nothing like the men she had known at home and in the office, the few, friendly dates she had ever been out on. He was beyond her experience, beyond her knowledge—and very definitely beyond her control.

Those instincts were working overtime again—and this time they were yelling at her that she was completely out of her depth with this man.

And if she wasn’t very much mistaken, she had just jumped right out of the frying-pan and straight into the very heart of the fire.




CHAPTER TWO


‘ME?’

THEO’S response to Skye’s shocked exclamation was as calm and relaxed as he could make it, though any real control was the last thing he felt capable of.

He should never have touched her.

His body still burned at the thought of it; his brain had almost melted in the burn of the fierce, erotic heat that had flooded every inch of his body, making him hard and hungry in a second. He still ached from the sudden ebbing of the blazing tide, the effect of the cold night air that had hit him as soon as they had left the bar.

He should never have touched her, but what he hadn’t anticipated was the way that she had responded to him.

He’d thought she felt it too.

If she hadn’t, then what the hell had she meant by the way she’d reacted—resting her head against his shoulder, leaning back into him?

But now she was behaving as if she thought he was a demon from hell and not at all the person she’d been hoping for

‘You were expecting someone else?’

‘N-no—not exactly,’ she stammered. ‘I—it’s just—I never thought that you’d be the one to come to my rescue. I should thank you,’ she added, too belatedly to smooth his very ruffled feelings.

‘Think nothing of it.’

A wave of his hand dismissed her stumbling thanks. Theo was well aware of the way that the frustrated demands of his aroused body were distorting his mood, making him feel bad-tempered and edgy. And what made a bad mood inflnitely worse was the way that, seeing her face full on now, in the light from the doorway, he found that the promise suggested by her back, her profile, indoors, was more than fulfilled by the reality.

She was gorgeous. A pale, oval face. Stunning light coloured eyes, with incredibly thick, lush lashes. A full, soft mouth seemed just made for kisses, and the thoughts that imagining that mouth on his own skin triggered off were so X-rated that he was glad of the shadows in the street, the darkness of the evening, that hid his response from her.

‘And I should introduce myself.’

Her hand came out, stiffly formal.

‘I’m—Skye…’

The hesitation before her name and the way that she didn’t add a surname told him she didn’t want to trust him with the full details of her identity. Fair enough, that was fine with him.

‘Anton,’ he growled, knowing he was forced to take her hand, but making the contact as brief and brusque as possible before letting it drop.

He didn’t want a repeat of the cruelly demanding sensations he’d experienced before, especially when it seemed that this Skye was determined to be on her way as soon as possible and there was no chance of taking things any further.

‘Anton.’

The way that she echoed the name he had given her made him wonder if she really knew, or suspected, it was not genuine.

He didn’t give a damn one way or another. Even here, in England, the Antonakos name—and, more importantly, the Antonakos fortune—was so well known that the realisation he was a member of that family was enough to create an interest where there wasn’t one, to put a speculative light in the eye of anyone he met.

And, in his experience, women were the worst offenders. Along with the name Antonakos, they saw the prospect of a meal ticket for life; a future of luxury and ease, if they could just play their cards right.

As he was not at all sure what sort of cards this Skye, whoever she was, was about to play; he preferred to keep his own—and the truth of his identity—very close to his chest.

Not that she seemed in the least interested right now. Those pale eyes were scanning the street, looking up and down the road.

‘Are you looking for someone?’

Suspicion made him voice it. Damn it, had he got this all wrong from the start? He cursed under his breath at the way that thought made him feel. He didn’t want her to have been really waiting for anyone. He had assumed that the lover she had claimed was imaginary—had wanted him not to exist.

The truth was that he wanted this woman for himself, and right now he was prepared to do whatever it took to get her.

‘Was that boyfriend you mentioned real after all?’

‘Oh, no.’

The shake of her head sent the red-gold fall of her hair flying around her face, tiny drops of rain shimmering in its depths from the drizzle that was falling.

‘No, I made him up in the hope they would let me go. I wasn’t looking for anyone—just a taxi.’

‘I can give you a lift anywhere you want to go.’

‘A taxi will be fine.’ It was the vocal equivalent of several steps backwards and away from him. No physical action could have put more of a distance between them.

A black cab was approaching and she lifted a hand to hail it, but too late. It swept past in a spray of water from the puddles filling the gutter, spattering her skirt and legs with mud.

‘I can give you a lift anywhere you want to go.’

The way he repeated his exact words of just moments before brought Skye’s eyes to his face in a rush. Meeting the glittering darkness of his gaze, seeing the way that the muscles of his jaw were drawn tight, she knew a sinking sense of realisation.

She’d insulted him with her refusal. He was angry too, something that told her how much her rejection had meant to him.

‘I—was trying to be sensible,’ she managed.

‘Isn’t it a little late for that now?’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Well, the situation you got yourself into back there—’ His dark head nodded towards the noisy, smoky bar. ‘That was hardly the action of a sensible person.’

The deliberate emphasis on the repeated word goaded her, as she was sure it was meant to do, sparking her temper and bringing her chin up, eyes flashing angry fire.

‘I didn’t exactly ask for that!’ she snapped. ‘It just happened!’

‘I only offered you a lift in my car.’

The resignation in his tone had a hard edge to it, one that warned her of the way his temper was fraying at the edges.

‘I’m sor—’ she began, but he ignored her and rushed on angrily.

‘I was brought up never to let a woman risk being on her own, if I could do anything to help her.’

‘Then get me a taxi—please.’

She prayed he wouldn’t argue further. She was rapidly losing her grip on her self-control as it was.

‘No.’

It was cold and hard and unyielding, and it chilled her blood just to hear it.

Out of the frying-pan and into the fire. The ominous phrase that had slipped into her head in the first moments they had been outside now pounded round and round inside her skull until she felt as if her mind would explode.

‘You don’t need a taxi. I will take you wherever you want to go.’

Skye’s eyes closed on a shudder of horror as she tried to imagine just how that scenario would play out. She didn’t even want to think of her father’s reaction if she was to arrive home in a strange car—with an unknown man. Even less did she want to imagine the way her prospective fiancé would view that situation.

Oh, why had she ever thought she could do this? Why had she let herself believe that she could fling herself into one night of liberty just to try and put a temporary barrier between herself and the future that lay ahead of her?

Why had she ever imagined that she could have one night in which she lived the same sort of life as her friends, as other young women her age? One night of total freedom, of irresponsibility, of reckless abandon before the walls of restraint and restriction closed round her once and for all?

She had never been able to live that way even when she had had her freedom—the freedom of youth. So why had she ever thought she could do it now, just for tonight? She had been out of her depth from the start—and she was sinking in deeper with every second that passed.

‘I’ll get one myself, then.’

She swung away from him violently, knowing in her heart that she was really running from herself, not from him. But she was closer to the edge of the pavement than she thought. Her heel caught on the kerb, twisted awkwardly and went from beneath her. She would have gone flying off the footpath, falling headlong onto the wet tarmac, into the middle of the road and the path of the oncoming cars, if the man beside her hadn’t reacted with instinctive speed.

‘Skye—look out!’

In the blink of an eye he was beside her, reaching out and catching her before her stumble became a fall. She was held tight, hauled up into arms that felt like tempered steel as they tensed, took her weight and then pulled her back to safety.

Safety? Or right back into the heart of danger?

Skye had no way of knowing and her head was whirling too much in the aftermath of the shock of her near fall to be able to think clearly.

The position she was in didn’t help either. Anton had spun her round as he caught her up so that now she was clamped tight against him, enfolded in his arms, with her body crushed against the hard length of his, her head on his chest, her cheek above the heavy, heated thud of his heart, the sound of his pulse in her ears.

And it was all happening again.

Just as it had when he had come up behind her in the bar, so now her blood was heating in urgent response to his closeness, her heart racing in time with the fierce beat of his. She was surrounded by him, held in the heat and hardness of his grip, the clean, male scent of his body surrounding her, melting her thoughts inside her head.

It felt like coming home.

It felt as if she had always been there. As if this was truly where she belonged. Where she most wanted to be in all the world. And with the instinctive cuddling movement of a small creature seeking comfort from the cold, hard world outside, she snuggled closer, burying her face in his shirt front, her hands sliding under his jacket, her arms going round the narrow waist.

She felt his grip tighten even more, and his dark head bent, his face coming so close to hers that the faint roughness of the beginnings of evening growth of beard rubbed lightly against the delicate skin of her cheek. She sensed—unbelievingly—the warm caress of his mouth on her neck, at the base of her ear, and heard his deep sigh as he whispered harshly against the delicate lobe.

‘Skye, don’t go—stay! I want you to stay.’

‘What?’

Had he really said what she thought she had heard? She couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be true. It had to be her ears deceiving her or the voice of her own hungry longings sounding inside her head, telling her what she most wanted to hear.

But she couldn’t have heard it. Men like this Anton didn’t suddenly beg girls like her to stay with them, not on such brief acquaintance.

Had he really said…?

Tilting her head, she tried to look up into his face, to read the answer there, but even as she moved his dark head came down towards hers. His mouth closed over hers and captured it in a searing, blazing kiss that sent a sensation like a lightning bolt fizzing through her body, right down to the tips of her toes.

This couldn’t be happening, was the one brief thought that Skye managed before her brain short-circuited and thinking became impossible. Before it was replaced only by feeling.

His mouth was pure enticement, pure sinful seduction. His kiss worked a spell on her that had her melting against him, into him, losing herself in the feeling of becoming part of him. Her lips parted, encouraging the heated invasion of his tongue, her sighing moan a sound of pure surrender, all that was female in her responding to the darkly elemental male in him. Something rich and dark and deeply sensual uncoiled way down low in her body and set up a heavy, honeyed pounding between her thighs.

The sounds and the lights of the street became nothing but a blur in the back of her mind as the strength of his hold lifted her up onto her toes, almost off her feet. Powerful hands thrust into the fall of hair, sweeping it back from around her face as hard fingers dug into her skull. The rain came down harder, colder, but she was lost and oblivious to it, adrift in a heated world where nothing else could reach her.

In the distance someone wolf-whistled, and slowly, reluctantly, they drew apart, breath coming heavily, eyes wide, expressions slightly dazed as they met each other’s gaze and acknowledged the primitive fires they had lit between them.

‘I…’ Skye began, but her voice broke in the middle, failing her completely as the reality of what had happened to her hit home like a savage blow to her head.

This was what it was all about. This was what malefemale relationships really meant. What those words like desire and passion and hunger had had hidden behind them, unrecognised by her until now.

Now.

The single word sounded like a knell inside her head, deadening her thoughts and bringing the cruel sting of tears to her eyes.

Now, when it was too late. When a malevolent fate had stepped in and decided her future for her.

When she knew that these delights, this sort of happiness, were to be denied to her for ever. She had learned the truth too late, only to have it snatched away from her in the same moment that she discovered it. And with no chance of anything more.

Except for tonight, a tiny voice whispered in her mind, bringing with it dreams and hopes of the sort that she had never allowed into her thoughts before. Dreams that made her shiver just to contemplate them.

Dreams that were here, now, within her reach, and all she had to do was to stretch out a hand and grasp them, make them hers, for tonight; for one night only.

‘Skye?’ the man called Anton questioned softly, making her realise how long she had been standing there, silent, distant, locked in the shadowed, ominous darkness of her thoughts.

The heat of his body still enclosed her, His hold had loosened, but she still pressed up against the powerful length of his body, feeling the hard ridge against her stomach that spoke of the desire that had been in his kiss. The same desire that had been in hers. That still throbbed along every nerve pathway, pulsed in her blood.

He had wanted her every bit as she had wanted him—he still did.

But she had only met him tonight.

‘I won’t hurt you.’ His voice was low and husky with need. So low and husky that it shocked her to think that she could ever have such an effect on any man—least of all this man. This tall, darkly imposing, devastating man.

‘I promise you, you’ll be safe with me. I swear…’

Her heart slammed against the wall of her ribcage, jerky and uneven, coming close to panic at just the thought of what she was considering. But the ache of need still suffused her own body and wouldn’t let her go.

If only this had happened sooner. If only she had met this Anton before…

But no. That was to wish for the impossible. Her fate had been sealed and she had no alternative but to go down the path that had been chosen for her. The path she had agreed to.

The path she had had no choice but to agree to.

From tomorrow, everything would change. From tomorrow her life would no longer be her own.

Skye’s teeth dug down hard into the softness of her bottom lip, scoring sharp little crescents into the delicate pink flesh.

Tomorrow.

Last week she had prayed that she could run away. She had dreamed of it, longed for it, hoped for a chance. But there was no chance. Too many people depended on her. If she had had any doubts about that, then the latest news only this week of how dangerous her mother’s heart condition really was had destroyed them for ever. She couldn’t run away and leave them all in the lurch.

But there was tonight.

Tonight she could run away—at least temporarily—from everything that was weighing her down. She could escape into a world of fantasy and sensual delight. A world that was so unreal she couldn’t really believe it was happening to her. A world in which, for once in her life—for the one and only time—just for a few short hours, she could experience the full heights of passion and the fierce sensuality that she had tasted so briefly just a few moments before.

One of the hardest things to accept about this marriage to Cyril Antonakos was the fact that her unwanted wedding night would be her first experience of sex. She was still a virgin and had never known any man who could make her feel enough to want to change that situation.

Until now.

Now she couldn’t bear the thought that a man nearing sixty would be her first, her only lover—when there was this man who only had to touch her and she felt as if she were going up in flames.

She could have tonight.

I promise you, you’ll be safe with me. I swear…

He didn’t even have to know her name. And tomorrow, as in some modern-day Cinderella story, reality would close in around her once again.

But she would have had tonight.

If only she could bring herself to answer him. If only she could find the courage to say…

‘Skye?’

Her name was rough on his tongue now, raw impatience and that devastating accent turning it into something new and strange. A sound she didn’t recognise as the name she heard every day.

‘Are you ever going to answer me?’

Skye tried. Swallowing hard to ease the dryness of her throat, she fought for the control, the strength she needed.

But then his long-fingered hand came under her chin, lifting it so that her face came up to meet his, her grey eyes meeting and locking with the deep, deep blackness of his. Drowning in their darkness.

He bent his head slowly and his mouth took hers. This time his kiss had none of the fierce, wild passion of moments before; instead it was soft and slow and heartbreakingly tender. It seemed to draw her soul out of her body, melt her bones, so that she was trembling against him, needing the potent strength of his body to support her so that she didn’t fall to the ground.

‘So tell me, my beauty,’ he whispered in a voice that was as dark and rich as the black velvet night sky above them. ‘Will you go or will you stay?’

My beauty, Skye thought hazily.

No one, not even her mother, had ever called her beautiful. Or made her feel it the way his kiss made her feel right now, here in this cold, rain-spattered street.

And suddenly there was only one answer to give him. Only one answer she could give him.

She had to have tonight. She might regret it in the morning, when reality hit her in the face. But the one thing she was sure of was that she could never regret it as much as she would bitterly regret saying no.

And so she lifted her head and kissed him back, putting her answer into the caress, but knowing she had to speak it too.

‘Oh, yes,’ she breathed softly, confidently. ‘Yes, of course I’ll stay. But on one condition…’




CHAPTER THREE


THEO flicked on the light and surveyed the room before him with a critical eye, frowning as he did so.

‘Are you sure that this is what you want?’

He supposed that the room was all right, as hotel rooms went. It was at least clean and reasonably sized, with a comfortable-looking bed, and the usual furniture and fittings. Through a door off to one side was the tiny en suite bathroom, severely tiled in plain, cold white, with toiletries, towels and bath robes all in the same non-colour.

It was all totally soulless, functional but impersonal, and therefore unwelcoming. And not at all the sort of place he would have thought that he would end up in tonight.

But then, nothing tonight had gone the way he had expected it.

He had certainly never anticipated ending up in an anonymous hotel room with a woman who stirred every single one of his most primitive senses, but whose first name was the only thing he knew about her.

‘We’re strangers,’ she had said, ‘and I want to keep it that way. You don’t know me and I don’t know you—that’s the way it has to be.’

No way! That was his first response. He actually stiffened, half turned to walk away, but she was still so close to him, he still had his arms around her, and the hot blood racing through his veins, the hungry need that clamoured at his senses, blurred his thoughts.

He couldn’t let her go.

He had known that in the moment that he had seen her turn to hail a taxi to take her away and out of his life. And if she went now, then she would be gone for ever. He would have no way of tracking her down. She would disappear into the night and he would never see her again; never know anything more about her.

‘You ask a lot, lady,’ he managed, his voice husky and rough.

She didn’t show any sign of reconsidering. Her lightcoloured gaze held his unwaveringly, and her soft mouth firmed to a determined line.

‘It’s that or nothing,’ she said, reaching up a slim hand to smooth it across the front of his shirt, and the small movement brought a waft of her scent up to his nostrils, tantalising his senses and drying his mouth.

Beneath the caress of her fingers, his skin burned and his heart kicked savagely, making his pulse throb, his senses swim.

‘That or nothing,’ she repeated and he knew that he could never live with ‘nothing’. He would always curse himself if he let this woman get away from him now.

‘Whatever you want, lady,’ he said, knowing it was nothing less than the truth. ‘Whatever you want.’

And what she wanted was this.

For tonight at least.

Well, he would let her get away with it for tonight—after all, she wasn’t the only one who had been a little…economical with the truth. But tomorrow always came.

Tomorrow he would be asking a lot of questions. And he’d want some very definite answers to all of them.

Meanwhile, he’d spend tonight convincing her that it wasn’t ‘that or nothing’ at all.

‘Skye?’ he questioned now when the woman who had come into the room just behind him didn’t answer. ‘What is it? Have you changed your mind about tonight? Do you want to go back on this—renege on what we agreed?’

Did she?

Did she want to back out of the deal? Was that what she wanted?

They were the questions Skye had been asking herself ever since they’d come upstairs. No—before that. The truth was that her courage and conviction had been seeping away from the moment that she had agreed to stay with him.

It was obvious that she’d shocked him to the core with her blunt announcement that if she stayed then he must never ask her her full name, and never give her his.

She’d thought that he was going to walk away when she’d said that. Certainly his expression had seemed to promise that he was going to reject her outrageous proposition out of hand. His whole face had closed off, shutters seeming to come down behind the brilliant black eyes, until every one of his features had appeared to be carved in cold, unyielding marble.

But then he had blinked once, very slowly, and nodded his dark head.

‘No,’ she said now, miserably aware of the way that her own inner tension made her voice sound tight and hard, coldly distant. ‘No, I’m not reneging on anything. It’s just…’

Just that I’m no good at this.

The words were burning on her tongue, but she swallowed them back hastily, closing her eyes against the terrible anxiety she was feeling. She couldn’t say them, not here, not now, not in this situation. Her stomach muscles were tying themselves into tight, painful knots, twisting each nerve harder and harder with every heartbeat.

‘Just what?’

His voice sounded disturbingly close and when her eyes flew open again it was to find that he had taken several long strides forward. He was standing right in front of her, so near that if she just lifted her hand she could touch him without even stretching out her fingers.

And she wanted to touch him. The tips of her fingers tingled with the remembrance of the way his skin, his hair had felt to their touch. Her palms felt again the heat of the muscles beneath his shirt, sensed the thudding of his heart under the strong bones of his chest.

If she slicked her tongue along her lips, she could still taste him, clean, musky, intensely masculine, making her heart skip a beat. And she wanted that taste, those sensations all over again. She wanted to lose herself in that wonderful, sizzling feeling that flooded her senses, swamping her mind and leaving her incapable of thought, knowing only need.

She wanted this man.

‘Just what?’ he prompted again, more roughly this time.

I want you to hold me—to make me forget…

‘Just that I wish you would kiss me again.’

‘Oh, that!’

It was edged with laughter, threaded through with a knowing triumph.

‘You only had to ask.’

He was already moving forward, taking her in his arms, drawing her close to him with the confidence of a man who was sure of his appeal; who had no doubt that he was wanted.

‘So tell me, sweetheart…’

A caressing hand slid under her chin, lifting her face to his, and his glittering black eyes locked with her cloudy grey ones, holding her gaze, keeping her so still that even her heartbeat seemed to freeze.

‘Where shall I kiss you? Here?’

The warm pressure of his mouth on her forehead was like a butterfly landing, light, delicate, there and gone again so swiftly that she barely even noticed it was there until she felt its loss. And when she did, her lips parted on a sigh of melancholy delight.

‘Or here…?’

This time he caressed her cheek, dropping a kiss just below her temple, on the left and then again on the right, making her breathing deepen, her senses start to stir.

‘Or perhaps here…?’

Softly, deliberately, he kissed her eyes shut, his lips lingering on the lids just long enough to seal them closed. At least, that was the way it felt to Skye, who found herself locked into a world of sensual darkness where every other sense seemed heightened and sharply sensitised to everything about him.

She could hear each breath he took, low and steady, matching the beat of his heart. His scent was on the air around her, that warm, clean, male essence, subtly blended with the tang of lime and spice in his cologne. When he took her hands in his, the heat seared across her skin like an electric current making her fingers curl in instant response, her breath catch sharply in her throat.

And it was all happening again.

She was melting inside, all the tension seeping out of her body so that she almost expected to see it pool on the floor at her feet. The honeyed pulse of desire was starting through her veins once more, sending the waves of yearning along the path of every nerve and setting them alight with need.

‘That will do for a start,’ she managed, amazed at her own boldness. A daring that was bolstered by the darkness behind her closed lids.

She couldn’t see the man who held her, couldn’t look into the darkness of his eyes and read anything—or nothing—from them. She could only feel, enclosed in her own private, secret world of sensations she had never known before, but now wanted to experience so much more.

She wanted to plunge into them like a swimmer diving straight into the deepest pool, letting the waters crash over her head and submerge her completely. Wanted to know it all. Wanted to snatch at things greedily and hungrily, grabbing them to her and swallowing them whole.

But Anton seemed determined to take things slowly. When she made a tiny movement of impatience he hushed her softly, smoothing the sound from her lips with a gentle finger.

‘Not so fast, my lovely. We have all night.’

All night…

It had a wonderful sound. A sound that seemed to promise hours that would stretch out and out in a never-ending way, delivering pleasure for as long as she could stand it. But at the same time, Skye knew just how quickly those hours would fly by. How soon they would be over.

She had this one chance to know the sensuous delights that instinct told her were ahead of her. She couldn’t waste them.

She wouldn’t waste them. Already her body was on fire with anticipation and longing and she was trembling in his arms, grateful for the security of his hold that was all that kept her upright.

‘Anton…’

His name was a moan of need on her lips and she felt as well as heard the soft laughter that shook his powerful frame.

‘I know, sweetheart,’ he told her and the new thickness in his voice revealed only too clearly just how much he did know. ‘I know the way you’re feeling—but, believe me, this will be worth taking slowly. It will be worth waiting for. Just go with me on this—let me show you…’

He was kissing her again now, his mouth taking a burning trail from her temple, down to her jaw before it captured her lips again. The touch of his mouth on her skin, the magic it could work, was threatening her ability to think. But there was one vital, practical matter she had to think of because the possible consequences if she didn’t were too horrific even to consider.

She had just this one night; she couldn’t risk the nightmare of any physical legacy that might result from it. That would destroy her and her family at a single stroke.

‘Do you…?’

It was a struggle to get the words out and not succumb to the erotic enticement that his lips were promising. But she had to say it. The woman he thought she was would never let it go unmentioned.

‘Have you any—protection?’

‘Of course.’

He didn’t even miss a beat. The response came as his caressing lips moved lower, found another pleasure spot Skye hadn’t even known existed.

‘The hotel shop stocks everything.’

‘Oh, yes.’

She hoped she sounded more assured than she felt. She had had a desperate attack of nerves when he had approached Reception to register and with a muttered excuse had disappeared into the nearest Ladies to hide for a moment. By the time she had emerged, cheeks flushed brightly, he had been waiting for her by the bank of lifts, the room key in his hand.

‘So now you can relax and know I’ll take care of you.’

There was such a darkly sensuous undertone in that remark that it made her toes curl inside her shiny patent leather shoes. Suddenly wanting to be rid of even such minor restrictions, she kicked off the high-heeled pumps and relaxed into Anton’s hold, abandoning herself to the moment. His arms almost lifted her off her feet, taking her up and hard against him so that she shivered at the feel of the hard ridge that marked the arousal he had no intention of hiding.

She flung her arms up around his neck, linking her fingers in the silky strands of the black hair as she gave herself up to the kiss. It was hard and hot and hungry and it fuelled an answering need inside her until she was burning up with it, swimming on a heated flood tide of passion.

Skye had never known her body to feel so alive before. Her heart was thudding, her head spinning. Her breasts felt swollen and, oh, so sensitive, the tight buds of her nipples stinging sharply.

She was swung off her feet, lifted from the floor and carried the short distance to the bed. Laying her down gently on the blue and green quilted covering, he kept his mouth on hers while his wickedly enticing hands found the fastenings of her dress, dispensing with the buttons in moments, the delicate lace of her bra no protection at all from his burning gaze.

Or the touch of those knowing hands.

At the sensation of the heat of his palms on her breasts, stroking delicately over the peach-coloured lace, catching and rolling the hardened nipples between strong fingers, Skye’s eyes flew open, meeting the glittering black gaze of the man above her.

‘An—’ she began, but he silenced her once more, kissing the exclamation from her trembling mouth.

‘Close your eyes,’ he commanded against her lips. ‘Close them and keep them shut.’

He caught her uncertain, anxious gaze and lifted his head to kiss her eyelids closed again, returning her to the warm velvet darkness once more.

‘Don’t look, just feel.’

How could she do anything else when already those tormenting hands were easing her bra from her, tracing hot, erotic patterns across her breasts, circling the peaks, making the nipples strain against their touch?

‘Feel this…’ he muttered with another tormenting caress across the sensitised skin, trailing fiery paths that sent shock waves of sensation pulsing through her.

The gentleness was not enough. She wanted—needed—more! Blindly reaching for him, she closed her hands over his powerful shoulders, pulling him down towards her, crushing her lips to his.

‘Help me—show me…’ she began against his mouth, only realising just in time what she had almost given away, revealing herself to him more than she truly wanted to.

She didn’t want him to realise—or even to suspect—her innocence. What would a man as sophisticated and worldly as this Anton seemed want with an innocent fresh up from the country—a real country bumpkin who had never known how it felt to make love with a man? An innocent whose lack of experience would no doubt make him laugh or shake his head in disbelief.

This man didn’t want an untutored lover. He must be used to women as knowing and as experienced as he clearly was. She would die of embarrassment if he realised how far from experienced she was.

‘Show me how to please you,’ she amended hastily, hoping she had caught the betraying words soon enough.

‘You’re doing okay all by yourself,’ was the muttered response and the raw edge to his voice made her heart jerk in unexpected sensual triumph.

Perhaps with her eyes closed she could be the woman he would want. With her eyes closed she felt less inhibited, less self-conscious. With her eyes closed she could indulge her need to reach out and touch, to let her hands close over the tight muscles of his shoulders and arms under the fine linen of his shirt.

When had he shrugged off his jacket?

Even working blind, her fingers had no problem dealing with the buttons down the front of his shirt, and within moments her searching hands had found the hot, hairroughened skin of his chest. It felt so warm to her touch, the tingling excitement tantalising her, driving her to explore further—much to Anton’s delight, to judge by his groan of response.

‘Quite okay…’

‘You’re not doing badly either.’

Somehow she managed to find just the right, casual tone. She was stunned to realise that he had slipped her clothing from her without any of the awkward tugging and pulling she had anticipated. The air of the overheated hotel room was warm on her exposed flesh, and, keeping her eyes closed, she managed not to blush hotly at the realisation that those dark, deep-set eyes were now fixed on her near naked body.

But she couldn’t ignore the fact of his touch. Her heart leapt at the first brush of hard fingers on delicate skin and it was all she could do not to curl up into a defensive ball and, muttering, ‘Oh, don’t,’ try to hide away from him.

The sensation only lasted a moment. A couple of heart-shuddering seconds later she was relaxing into the wonderful sensations his caresses woke in her. Her hungry senses stirred, thrilled, cried out for more. And the whimpering cries that were all she could manage spoke to him only too clearly of her need.

The stroking hands grew harder, urgent, more demanding. And as she writhed beneath his touch his mouth moved over her too, kissing his way along her shoulder, down to the slope of her breast, catching the already aching nipple between his lips and tugging hard.

Skye’s only response was a high, wordless sound of wonder as her breath stilled in her throat and her body arched against his in urgent invitation.

‘Please…’

It was all she could manage, though she had no idea whether she was begging for more of the sharply sensual caress—or for him to stop before she fainted away completely from a pleasure that was so intense it was almost a pain. Burning sensations of delight sizzled through her, making her head spin, and the spiralling delight took all her ability to think from her.

Those wickedly tormenting hands were heading lower, stroking up the soft inner flesh of her thighs, slipping under the waist of the peach silk knickers that were somehow her only item of clothing, easing the flimsy garment away from her body.

All the embarrassment she had thought that she would feel at being exposed in this way was swept away on a molten tide of hunger. This was what she wanted; what she needed. This was…

Her mind splintered in an explosion of erotic delight as that tormenting touch reached the most sensitive spot of her femininity. The tantalising caress had her gasping in uncontrolled response, moving convulsively, stretching to press herself against that arousing fingertip. Wave after wave of heated pleasure throbbed through her, leaving her weak and abandoned, adrift on the aftershocks of a pleasure she had never known existed.

And in that moment Anton covered her body with his own, fitting his heavy, muscled legs between the splayed whiteness of her thighs, pushing them wide. The hot power of his erection sought the warm, slick darkness of her innermost core, and there was no time for hesitation or for fear. No time to suffer second thoughts or worry about her inexperience.

The actual moment of possession was so swift, so sure, thrusting deep into her already yearning body that only the faintest sting of pain, of protest from the stretching of tender tissues, gave any indication that this was the first experience of an unknown sensation. For just a brief heartbeat her eyes flew open wide, staring up into the dark, intent face above her in stunned bewilderment, blurring into a wild kaleidoscope of misty colour. Dazed grey gaze locked with passion-glazed black and the rest of the world went completely out of focus.

But then he began to move, deep and strong within her; each thrust piling sensation upon sensation, fire upon fire, until she thought her mind would surely melt in the inferno of pleasure that assailed her.

Her eyes fell closed again, the better to enjoy the stunning sensations rippling through her body. Her head went back against the pillows, her mouth slightly open to enable her to catch the breaths that seemed to have abandoned her needy lungs, her whole system going into shutdown, into primitive total concentration on the one vital core of her being.

She was being taken up and up again, lifted higher, higher, higher—climbing towards the peak she hadn’t known existed, but had somehow, intuitively, instinctively, been reaching for. And in the instant that at last she reached it she toppled over the edge, no longer inside her body but floating high and free on a wild explosion of starlight, tumbling into complete oblivion, into the blank unconsciousness of total ecstasy.

A heartbeat later, Theo joined her, his harsh cry of fulfilment the last sound before he too lost all consciousness of the world apart from this woman whose body enclosed his so hotly, and the ragged, thudding beat of his own heart.

It was an unconsciousness from which he barely surfaced long into the night. There were times when his senses struggled to the surface of the erotic stupor into which he had fallen, and almost regained the knowledge of reality and where he was.

Almost.

Because each time he came close to waking, each time he stirred and reached out a hand or moved a sensually aching limb, he encountered the soft, warm shape of the woman beside him. And each time he touched her it was like connecting with a live electric current. The wildfire magic flared again, rousing them both from the depths of sleep, making them hungry again, setting their pulses pounding, their breath rasping. Bringing them together in a wild, fierce coupling that once again obliterated thought or any sense beyond the primitive demands of their bodies and the appetites that only each other could appease.

Until in the end a total exhaustion claimed them, dropping him down into a sleep so deep, so all-enclosing, that he didn’t even stir when, just as dawn was breaking, Skye managed to drag herself from the depths of oblivion and forced her reluctant body to slip from the bed.

She couldn’t even look at the sleeping man as she pulled on her clothes with more haste than finesse though she was painfully, agonisingly aware of his dark head, the powerfully carved features still resting on the softness of the pillows. She didn’t want to leave. Tears stung her eyes at the thought of the moment that she would step outside the door of this small room—this small, uninteresting, anonymous room that had come to seem like a tiny piece of heaven to her. She would have to walk out that door, out of the glorious dream she had known for one night, and back into the cold, cruel world of life.

Reality would close around her once again and this very special time would just be a memory.

She didn’t even dare press the kiss she hungered for on his sleeping face for fear that even the lightest touch would wake him. That those deep, dark eyes—the eyes she had lost herself in last night—would fly open and look straight into hers. She could almost see the frown that would crease the space between the black, arched brows, hear his softly accented voice demanding to know where she was going.

She couldn’t face that. It would destroy her even to try.

Another day; another time. The words echoed like a lament inside her head.

If they had met another day, another time, then perhaps they might have had a future. She might have been able to—

No!

Fiercely she caught back her wayward thoughts, knowing they would weaken her resolve, tie her already leaden feet to the ground if she let them into her head.

She had to go—now—as fast as she could. Not even troubling to pull on tights over her bare legs, she forced her feet into her shoes, snatched up her jacket and bag, and fied towards the door.

There was a long desperate moment of panic as the handle squeaked, the hinges creaked, but then she was out and easing the door shut, allowing herself only a moment for a gasping sigh of relief before she fled down the carpeted corridor, heading for the lift.

Had she forgotten anything? Left a betraying clue behind?

A desperate check of her belongings confirmed she had everything with her—a fact that should have reassured her, but it didn’t.

Because the truth was that what she had left behind was a vital part of her soul.




CHAPTER FOUR


‘WE’LL be landing in five minutes, sir.’

‘Thank you.’

Theo acknowledged his pilot’s words with a nod. He hadn’t even needed them, really. His own eyes had told him just how close they were getting to Helikos, the small dot in the ocean that was his father’s private island.

The island that had been home to Theo himself, all the time he had been growing up.

Then, when he had been just a boy, and had returned home from the long weeks away at the exclusive English boarding-school he had detested but which his father had been determined would turn him into a gentleman, he had recognised every tiny landmark on the flight from Athens airport. He had almost hung out of the helicopter cockpit to spot each change in the scene beneath them, the dozens of other, tiny, uninhabited islands that marked the familiar route to his beloved family home.

And when Helikos had finally come into view, at first as just a small dot on the horizon, he had always let out a great cheer to celebrate that, at last, for him, the holidays had begun.

But this time there was no excited thudding of his heart, no resounding cheer on his lips. Instead he viewed the approaching coastline with a dour, cynical expression, watching it come nearer with a complicated mix of emotions in his soul. He was heading back to Helikos after an absence of five long years, but the island was no longer truly home to him. The split with his father had seen to that. And now there was the new wife to consider, too.

Theo scowled as the sound of the engine changed subtly, indicating that the pilot was beginning their descent. Another complication he could well do without. Though, from the little information he had had about her, this marriage was clearly not a love match. More like a business deal.

‘I don’t think you’ll find the island much changed.’

It was the pilot again, interrupting his thoughts as his voice came through the earphones both men wore.

‘I doubt if it’s changed in the least.’

Theo kept his eyes on the dark mass of land set in the brilliant sea. He was not in the mood for conversation; in fact he was not in the mood to be here at all. He most definitely was not in the mood for meeting his father’s latest floozy and trying to be polite to her. Cyril Antonakos was not known for choosing the most intelligent of female companions, and unless his father had changed dramatically in the past five years, then tonight’s dinner when he was to meet the brand-new Antonakos bride-to-be was going to be a long endurance test.

All the more so because his mind would be anywhere but here on Helikos.

From the moment that he had woken to find the space in the bed beside him cold, the room empty, he hadn’t been able to get the mysterious Skye out of his thoughts. He had spent the last week hunting for traces of the woman who had shared that one amazing night with him, but, with so little to go on, he had had a frustrating lack of success. He would do better, he knew, to forget the whole thing and put her out of his mind.

But in one brief night she had got completely under his skin and he couldn’t forget about her. Even when he slept, his dreams were filled with hot, erotic images of the night they had spent together. He would dream that he held her close, her slender, smooth-skinned limbs entangled with his, her Titian hair spread across the pillows, over his face, her perfume driving him wild.

And then he’d wake with his heart racing, his breath coming in raw, uneven gasps, his body slicked with sweat as if he had actually been making love to her in reality and not just in his mind. But of course none of it was real—none of it except the burning ache in his groin, the throb of unappeased hunger through every nerve.

If he could, he would have made some excuse and not come here. But the division between him and his father had gone on quite long enough. If Cyril was prepared to offer an olive branch, however half-hearted, then he, Theo, would meet him more than part way.

The house was just as he remembered it. High on a cliff above the sea, the huge white building sprawled over a large plot of land on two levels, each with its own vast veranda giving an amazing view of the ocean. A wide arched gateway to one side led to a stone-flagged patio, the oval swimming pool, and a small pool house that doubled as a guest house.

As Theo approached the door was pulled open and a small, plump, dark-haired figure hurried towards him.

‘Master Theo! Welcome! It’s wonderful to have you back!’

‘Amalthea…’

Theo submitted to the exuberant embrace of the tiny woman who had been his nurse as he grew up, and, because his mother had died when he was small, the closest person to a mother he had ever known.

‘Where am I staying? Have you put me in my old room?’

Amalthea’s dark eyes clouded as she shook her greying head.

‘Your father told me to put you in the pool house.’

So the olive branch was not quite as definite as he had thought, Theo told himself with a twist of sardonic resignation. His father was a hard man to like—a difficult man to love. He took offence easily and held onto grudges for a long, long time. It seemed that being invited here for the old man’s wedding was only the start of things. There wasn’t any sign of the fatted calf being prepared for the return of the prodigal son.

‘Who’s in my room?’

Surely the guests hadn’t started to arrive just yet? The wedding wasn’t taking place until the end of the month.

‘The new Kyria Antonakos.’

‘My father’s fiancée?’

So his father and the bride-to-be didn’t share a room already. That was a surprise.

‘What’s she like?’

Amalthea rolled her eyes in an expression of disapproval that she could only get away with in front of Theo.

‘Not at all his usual sort. But she is very beautiful.’

‘They’re always beautiful,’ Theo commented cynically. ‘That’s why he chooses them. Is my father at home now?’

‘He had to go to the village,’ Amalthea told him. ‘But he’ll be back this evening in time for dinner. His fiancée is at home. Would you want to—’

‘Oh, no,’ Theo put in swiftly, before she could even form the suggestion. ‘Dinner time will be soon enough.’

That way he could get both awkward encounters over and done with in the same time. Perhaps making polite small talk with The Fiancée would be easier than trying to carry on any sort of a conversation with his parent.

‘My bags will have been taken to the pool house. I’ll unpack and settle in—maybe have a swim.’

He stretched slowly, easing muscles cramped tight after the journey from London.

‘It’s good to be home.’

So this was to be home.

Skye turned away from the window with its panoramic view of the sea and sank back down onto the bed with a sigh, digging her teeth into her lower lip in an attempt to force back the tears that were threatening.

She was always on the edge of tears these days. Always only just managing to subdue the panic that gripped her when she contemplated what lay ahead of her. She still couldn’t quite take it all in. Still couldn’t believe that this was to be her future.

But sitting here brooding wasn’t going to change that. She really ought to come out of the bedroom at some point soon, and get to know the rest of the house better. She was going to live here, after all.

That thought only added to her sense of desolate unreality. This house, beautiful as it was, just didn’t seem anything like the home she had left in the damp and green countryside of Suffolk, the small village where she had grown up.

She supposed she would get used to it in time. She had to get used to it; she had no choice.

Skye rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes, brushing away the tears. When she’d phoned home earlier, her father had told her that her mother had been taken into hospital again. Claire Marston needed yet another operation, and soon. And her doctors had said that it was vital she was kept quiet. Any stress at all could be fatal.

It was a terrible, bitter irony, one that brought a taste like the burn of acid into her mouth, to think that she had always dreamed of visiting Greece, of seeing the cluster of the Sporades Islands, perhaps holidaying there. She had dreamed of the sunshine, the sea, the white houses she had seen in photographs. And now she had achieved her dream, but it had turned into a terrible nightmare; one from which even waking wouldn’t mean that she could escape.

Now she had the sun. It had been shining all day. And, there, beyond her window, was the sea, an almost unbelievable bright and sparkling turquoise in colour. She lived in one of the white houses—a huge white house. And she hated it.

She was lonely and lost and terrified of the future.

And she had no way out.

‘Oh, Dad! Why did you have to be so stupid? How could you have made such a mess of things?’

If only…

But no! Skye caught herself up sharply, giving herself a brusque, reproving shake.

She couldn’t let herself dwell on if only. Couldn’t even let herself dream of if only.

But, oh, if only she had never made that mad, foolish mistake last week. If only she hadn’t given into the crazy, wild impulse to have one last night of freedom while she could.

And if only she had never met the most devastating man called Anton. A man who had taken her to bed for the most amazing, most stunning, most memorable night of passion. The only night of such passion she was ever likely to know. A night of passion she would never forget.

And she could never, ever forget the man who had shared it with her.

But because she would never forget, then the situation in which she now found herself became so very much worse. Appallingly so. Perhaps before last week she might have been able to bear the prospect of the future with some degree of equanimity. Now she had been shown, oh, so briefly, the image of another, very different future, only to have it snatched away from her for ever, and she had no idea at all how she was ever going to cope.

But she had to. Even though she felt that her heart would break just with trying.

‘Come on, Marston!’ she told herself fiercely. ‘Pull yourself together. You’re going to have to make the best of this!’

She could at least keep herself busy. Keep her mind occupied and not let herself brood.

What was it Cyril had said before he left—to go into the village on business?

‘Make yourself at home. The house is yours—anything you want, just ask for it. Use the cinema, or the pool.’

The pool! There was her answer. Some exercise would distract her; it would fill the long, empty afternoon that stretched ahead. And if she was lucky, it would tire her out so that she would finally manage to sleep tonight.

And she needed to sleep, she told herself as she pulled open a drawer, hunting through it for the sleek white costume that Cyril had insisted on buying for her when he had realised that she didn’t have anything to wear to swim in, apart from the regulation navy blue one piece that had seen her through school and was now definitely on its last legs.

She would exercise until she was exhausted and then tonight she might crash out, almost unconscious. With luck she would not have to lie there, in the strange bed, staring at the white-painted ceiling, remembering…

Or would falling asleep be worse? Every night she had slept so badly, locked in feverish dreams of a night in a hotel, a long, sleekly muscled body next to hers, powerful arms holding her, jet-black eyes looking down at her. And every morning she had woken with the bedclothes in a twisted tangle, knotted around her body, evidence of the disturbed night she had passed.

She was shivering with reaction to her memories as she pulled on the white swimsuit, grabbed a towel, and headed for the pool.

Theo’s unpacking only took a very short time. There was little enough to put away in the cupboards of the pool house where his father had left instructions he was to stay, his old room apparently being occupied by The Fiancée, and now he was at a loss. The afternoon was warm and the thought of the cool, clear water of the pool was appealing. It was the work of seconds to change into black swimming shorts and head outside, padding silently in bare feet over the white-tiled surround.

What he didn’t expect was to see someone already in the water. Shock brought him to a halt, eyes narrowing against the glint of the sun on the water as he studied the scene before him.

A sleek form sped through the water, powering from one end of the pool to another. A sleek female form in a clinging white costume. The Fiancée, if he wasn’t very much mistaken. He couldn’t see much of her from here, she was swimming away from him and the water hid most of her body. He had a brief, blurred impression of dark hair, long, slender arms slicing through the water, slim, toned legs kicking out behind the shapely body, high, tight buttocks…

What the hell was he doing? He couldn’t have thoughts like that about his father’s fiancée—the woman who was going to be his stepmother by the end of the month.

Or was this in fact the brand-new fiancée? Because she was much younger than he had ever anticipated…

Perhaps The Fiancée had been married before and this girl was a daughter? Whoever she was, she made him think disturbingly of the mysterious Skye.

He’d better make himself known to her. He didn’t want to give the impression of behaving like a peeping Tom, standing here staring at her.

‘Kalimera.’

She hadn’t heard him—the water must still be in her ears. Or perhaps she didn’t even understand Greek. A cynical smile twisted his mouth. It was an indication of just how bad things had become between him and his father that he had no idea whether the new woman in Cyril’s life was Greek or some other nationality entirely. The last time he had known anything about any of Cyril’s mistresses, his father had been deeply involved with a woman from the village.

‘Good afternoon.’ He spoke again, more firmly and clearly this time, just as she reached the far end of the pool and held onto the side, wiping the water from her face. ‘I think I ought to introduce myself to you, Stepmama.’

It was her stillness that told him something was wrong. The sudden total freezing into immobility that caught on a raw edge in his mind and made him frown, studying her more closely.

Just what had he said that had startled her so much?

Even from this distance he could see the way that she clutched at the side of the pool, the pressure that turned the knuckles white on each delicate hand.

That hand…

Suddenly, shockingly, it was as if he had been kicked in the stomach hard.

A cold, damp night in London. A smoky bar. The laughter of two men.

A hand held prisoner on the table top.

‘Theos, no!’

He had to be imagining things. Fooling himself.

But in the warmth of the Greek sun the hair that tumbled down her back—the hair that he had thought was dark, but now he could see was only soaked with water from the pool—was already starting to dry. And as it dried its colour changed, lightening…revealing a red-gold tint.

‘Ochi…’

Feeling as if he had been slapped on the side of the head, Theo reverted to his native Greek, shaking his head in denial of what he was seeing, what he suspected.

‘No!’

It couldn’t be true.

But if it wasn’t, then why was she still standing as if frozen, with her head turned away from him—that long, straight back held tight with tension, the delicate hands clenched over the edge of the pool?

Why didn’t she turn and face him—revealing the features of a total stranger, shattering the foolish, damn stupid, appalling delusion that had taken a grip on his mind and wouldn’t let go?

She wasn’t…she couldn’t be…

‘Skye?’

From the moment that she had first heard that voice, Skye had been fixed to the spot, unable to move, unable to think, unable to breathe.

‘Good afternoon,’ he had said, and it was as if a cruel hand had reached out through time and yanked her backwards, dragging her away from the present, and back into the past, into a whirlwind of memories that paralysed her mind, slashed at her soul.

‘Good afternoon.’

Those were the words she had heard in the clear light of today. But in her mind what she had heard was: Oh, but he does.

The first words that Anton had spoken on the night in London. The night that ever since had simply become that night in her thoughts, with no further title needed.

That night.

That was when she had first heard that rich, slightly husky voice with the touch of the beautiful accent that made her toes curl in response.

But how could she have heard it here and now?

She had to be imagining things! She couldn’t have heard it. He couldn’t be here. Fate couldn’t be so cruel.

But then he had said, ‘I think I ought to introduce myself to you,’ and the world had tilted violently, swinging right off balance, making her head spin crazily.

Her vision had blurred, her stomach had clenched tight in panic. She couldn’t see, couldn’t think. She had to know—and yet she didn’t dare to look round, terrified in case she was right. In case it was him.

And then the worst horror of all.

‘Skye?’

He used her name. In the voice that she had heard him use dozens of times—a hundred times—on that night. She had heard it said calmly, heard it said softly, heard it said huskily, seductively, passionately, demandingly. And finally, she had heard her own name used as a cry of fulfilment, as he had lost himself in her. But always, always, in that voice.

Anton?

She didn’t dare to speak his name aloud, fearing that she might be tempting fate by doing so. That she might turn into reality what she still fervently hoped was just a delusion, a trick of sound combining with her overactive imagination.

‘What the hell?’

The harsh, angry question brought her swinging round, unable to bear the suspense any longer. She had to know.

He was standing on the edge of the pool, hands on hips. The sun was behind him so that she had to squint against it to see his face. But she already knew, and her heart was racing so fast that she was sure it would escape the confines of her chest. Already she couldn’t breathe and her mind was frozen in stunned horror.

Perhaps it was because of that, or perhaps it was the sun dazzling her eyes, but something made her lose her grip, slip and fall. She reached for the rim of the pool, missed, and went under, still gasping for breath.

Water in her ears and eyes, she didn’t hear anything, couldn’t see anything. She went down…down…

There was a flurry nearby. A long body slashed into the water at her side. Strong hands seized her; powerful arms hauled her up to the surface. Before she had time to think, she was dragged to the shallow end of the pool, and supported gently as she gasped and wheezed, struggling to get her breath back.

‘Steady,’ that voice advised her. ‘Breathe deeply.’

She would if she could, Skye told herself, but if anything was guaranteed not to calm her down, it was this.

Now she didn’t have to look into his face to know he was Anton. Even after only one night—that night—she knew this male body so intimately that she could never mistake it. There were the hard, strong bones of the ribcage, the black curling hair that marked a path down the centre of his chest, disappearing under the waistband of the swimming trunks. There was the tiny, crescent shaped scar high up on his collar-bone, almost at the base of his throat. And if there had been any room for doubt, then her nostrils were filled with the scent of his body, musky, intensely male, warmed by the sun and blending with the ozone tang of the pool water.

She didn’t know if it was her intense physical reaction to him or simply the shock of his sudden appearance that made her tremble all over, her legs feeling too weak to support her.

‘Thank you,’ she managed, her voice sounding as if she had been running a marathon.

‘No problem,’ he returned smoothly, though there was a dark thread to his voice that brought her head up sharply, frowning grey eyes meeting the fixed black gaze of his.

He didn’t enlighten her further, but instead half dragged, half carried her to the low stone steps into the pool, swinging her up into his arms and carrying her out onto the tiled edge where he set her down again beside a wooden lounger.

Skye had to bite down hard on her lower lip to keep her mouth closed against the cry of protest as he let her go. In his arms, she had been struggling with a terrible longing, with a weak, dangerous impulse to turn her head into his chest and let it rest there. The need to nestle close into his arms, to put her own hands up around his neck and cling on tight, had almost overwhelmed her. But she had known that such a response was forbidden her. She had forfeited the right to it in the moment that she had closed the door on that hotel room and walked away.

He would never know just how hard she had found it to do that. How much she had longed to stay, but known that it was impossible. She had left a piece of her heart with him, though he would never know it. And as soon as he worked out just why she was here then he wouldn’t even want her near him, let alone keep her in his arms where she longed to be.

Still supporting her with one hand, he snatched up a towel with the other and began to rub her dry. His movements were brisk and impersonal and the one, nervous look she shot at his face made her stomach tie itself into tight, painful knots of apprehension.

The stunning face was tight with control, skin drawn so taut over the forceful bone structure that it was actually white at the corners of his mouth with the effort of not speaking. He was only keeping quiet until she had recovered.

And then?

Just the thought made her shiver again, more violently this time, yelping in discomfort as he increased the pressure of the towel on her sensitised skin.

‘Sighnomi…’

The apology was abstracted and he tossed the towel away, coal-black eyes raking over her from the top of her head, where her wet hair hung in tangled rats’ tails around her face, to the bare pink toes on the white-tiled surface.

But it was when they swung back up to her face that her courage almost failed her completely.

Now it was going to begin, she told herself, swallowing hard.

He’d waited long enough, that cold, set expression said. Now he wanted explanations.




CHAPTER FIVE


‘WE HAVE some talking to do.’

Theo had no idea how he kept control over his voice. The coldly burning rage inside him would keep fighting to get away from his determination to rein it in, and the resulting conflict made his tone brutal and cold as a sword of ice.

He wanted to know just what the hell was going on. How the woman he had last seen in a London hotel room—the woman who had wanted only a one-night stand, no names, no information—had turned up on Helikos, at his father’s house, in his father’s pool.

Though he would be able to think much more clearly if she would just cover up.

‘Don’t you have a wrap or something? Something to put on.’

‘I—I’m not cold.’

‘It’s not your temperature I was thinking of!’

He knew he was glaring ferociously. The look in her eyes and the way that she took an instinctive step backwards, away from him, told him that. But he had been knocked off balance by the discovery of her in the pool and being close to her, like this, only made matters so much worse.

He had thought that his memories of her soft-skinned, naked body were arousing enough—in fact, he had tried to convince himself that he had exaggerated her appeal. No woman, no real, living, breathing woman, could have been as physically appealing as his recollections told him she had been. But those recollections had been nothing but the truth.

Less than the truth, in fact. Because the memories had none of the warm, physical presence of this woman. And though the white swimming costume might be modest when compared with the skimpy bikinis worn by so many on the Greek beaches, its subtle sexuality was doing devastating things to his heart rate and his ability to think. The stretchy material clung to the swell of her breasts and hips, the thin straps revealing the peachy skin and soft curves of her shoulders, while the cutaway shape made her legs seem endlessly elegant. Just to think of those long legs curled around his waist, squeezing tight as she gave herself up to the throes of her orgasm, threatened to blow his mind into tiny, spinning splinters that were impossible to form into any coherent thoughts.

‘We might both be able to talk more rationally if you were more—respectably dressed.’

That softly curved mouth took on a mutinous set that wasn’t quite matched by the fiare of something in her eyes. Not anger, but something wild and defiant, clashing with his dark glare until he almost felt he could see sparks in the air between them.

‘And you think that your clothing is so much more decorous?’ she flashed back, lacing the words with an unexpected sting.

‘Is that a way of saying that you don’t trust yourself to keep your hands off me?’ Theo said scornfully. ‘Because you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t believe you. You had no trouble tearing yourself away from my bed that night…’

‘That night was a mistake and one I’ve regretted ever since.’

‘Not as much as I have, lady. I don’t happen to go in for one-night stands and if I’d known you were going to disappear like that, I’d have had more than second thoughts about the whole situation. And then when I find you swimming in my father’s pool—’

‘I never tried to deceive you in any way. I told you exactly what…’

Her voice died abruptly as she realised just what he had said. All colour fied from her cheeks, leaving her looking white as a ghost.

‘Your father’s—!’

She actually glanced back at the pool and then back to his face, her grey eyes wide with shock and disbelief.

‘Did you say…?’

This couldn’t be real! It couldn’t be happening, Skye thought in desperation. Please let it not be happening. Please let it be a dream—a nightmare from which she could wake.

He couldn’t have said my father’s pool. Because that would make him Cyril’s son. The son of the man she had to marry. The son of the man who held the fate of her whole family in his hands and who could destroy their hope of a future if he chose.

She actually caught a tiny part of her arm in her fingers and pinched hard, praying it might bring her out of the horror. But, of course, nothing happened. She was still standing there, bathed in the Greek sunlight, with the only sound that of a faint ripple of the water in the pool where a breeze hit it.

And Anton was standing beside her, big and dark and dangerous-looking.

‘But you said your name was Anton.’

She flung the accusation into his cold, set face, but his expression didn’t change and he continued to regard her with a stony lack of expression.

Anton…Antonakos. Suddenly the truth fell into place with a shock that made her head spin.

‘You lied to me!’

His shrug was a swift, careless dismissal of the charge.

‘I was economical with the truth. I find it’s often the best policy until I get to know someone’s real motives.’

The cold, slashing look he flung at her left her in no doubt that she had been included in the group of people whose motives he considered suspect. The ice in it seemed to take away all the heat of the sun so that her skin crawled with goose-bumps and it was all she could do to suppress an instinctive shiver. Reaching for the towel she had left on the wooden lounger earlier, she pulled it round her, knotting it securely over her breasts, under her armpits.

Covered, she felt a little more confident until he spoke again.

‘And, as I recall, you were the one who insisted we kept to one name only.’

He was right, of course, and the knowledge of it didn’t make her feel any better. Dear God, what sort of malign fate had brought her together with this man on that night? How had she had the appalling bad luck to walk into the one bar where Cyril’s son had been sitting on his own?

And what had he been doing in London? All she knew about Cyril and his son was that they had not been on the best of terms for some time. So did this man know…?

The terrible reality of the whole truth she had been keeping from him made her stomach heave nauseously.

‘Mine was at least my real one,’ she said, taking the risk of stepping a little further into the danger zone. ‘I’m Skye Marston.’

There was no flicker of anything in the opaque-eyed stare that he turned on her. So was it possible that his father hadn’t told him?

‘Theodore Antonakos,’ he returned, totally deadpan. ‘Usually known as Theo.’

The look that scoured over her made her feel as if it had scraped away a much-needed layer of skin, so that in spite of the bulky protection of the towel wrapped around her she felt exposed and naked to his cold scrutiny.

‘So now what?’ the man she now had to call Theo drawled with lazy mockery. ‘Do we shake hands formally and really do everything totally back to front?’

‘I think we’ll take the handshake as read,’ Skye returned stiffly. The idea of even touching him frankly terrified her. She just could not forget the burn of his skin on hers, the caressing touch of those long, powerful hands that could turn as gentle as the patting paws of a kitten when he chose or be as demanding as blazing fire. ‘We’ve already done that bit.’

‘And more,’ he returned dryly, and the wicked gleam deep in those brilliant black eyes told her that he remembered every moment of it.

As did she.

That night was etched onto her brain in images of fire. It had been bad enough when it was just a memory. But now, with the man himself an actual physical force before her, not just an image in her mind, she felt as if her thoughts might go up in flames as a result.

‘I’d rather forget about that.’

The tension in every inch of her body had affected her mouth too, and the words came out so tight and clipped they could hardly have been more stilted. Her voice sounded like some second-rate actress trying to speak like an upper-class Englishwoman, and strangling the sounds as she did so.

Evidently Theo thought so too, as his wide, mobile mouth twitched uncontrollably at her words. But every last trace of humour was erased from it when he spoke, and his eyes had turned to black ice under heavy, hooded lids.

‘I’m sure you would, but I have to tell you that I don’t feel the same.’

Provocatively he reached out a lazy hand and trailed his fingers along her throat and across the top of the white towel, coming to a deliberate halt by the knot that held it closed.

‘The truth is that the experience is one I would very much like to repeat.’

The bronzed fingertips moved to the edge of her shoulder, then back again, and it was all Skye could do to control the instinctive squirm of response that would have betrayed her feelings.

The instant peaking and hardening of her breasts was something she could do nothing about. A heat that had nothing to do with the sun, licked along her veins, making the towel seem too heavy, the clinging white swimming costume too restricting to wear underneath it. But she could only be thankful that the thick padding hid her intimate reaction from those probing black eyes.

‘Then I’m afraid you’ll have a long wait. I told you it was a one-night thing only.’

‘You also told me that we would never know each other’s names. Never meet again.’

He paused just long enough for the shocking impact of those words to hit home hard with the realisation that both of them had now been disproved.

‘And I told you that I never do one-night stands. It’s a personal rule I have.’

‘Well, then, it’s a rule that you’re just going to have to break this time. Because I have no intention of renewing our—acquaintance in any way. One night was more than enough for me and that’s the way I want things to stay.’

‘Is that so?’

His arms folded across his chest, Theo looked her up and down with coldly contemptuous black eyes.

‘Well, let’s see.’

Before Skye had a moment to realise just what was in his thoughts, he had moved forward, taking her chin in one powerful hand and wrenching her face up towards his. She had just one split second in which to recognise the ruthless intent in his eyes, but not long enough to voice the protest that formed in her mind.

Her mouth was still opening to try and speak as his came down, hard and determined, crushing the objection straight back down her throat.

As a kiss, it was cruel and passionless, but as an act of punishment for rejecting his demand out of hand, it was perfect. There was nothing of affection or warmth in it, only a cold-blooded determination to show her who was in control here.

But it didn’t stay that way.

Because something happened in the moment that their lips touched. Something that charged the atmosphere, changed the truth of that kiss into something very new and very different.

From something meant to control and be controlled, in the space of a heartbeat it fiared into something totally out of control. Heat burned; hunger woke and demanded appeasement; need broke free of all restraint.

Skye swayed forwards, melting against Theo’s hard form, and his arms came out to enclose her, imprison her along the length of him. Skin seemed to blend with skin, arms, legs, bodies entangled. Their heartbeats lurched, quickened, raced, thudding in time with each other, drowning out all other sounds beyond the pulse of molten blood in their veins. Their only breathing was the quickly snatched gasps of urgent passion, grabbed at frantically to avoid oblivion, but allowing for only the briefest moments away from the clinging, teasing, openly demanding mouth of the other.

‘Skye—beauty—agape mou…’

Theo’s voice was thick and rough with lust, his hands as clumsy as they tugged at the barrier of soft towelling that came between them, pulling the insecure knot loose in seconds, the white folds tumbling to the ground at their feet.

‘You may have had enough but I have not. I want this—’

Skye’s mouth opened under his in a gasp of shocked delight as his hand skimmed over her straining body, heat searing through the white Lycra, inflaming her hunger even more.

‘And I want this…’

That searching hand found the swell of one breast where the betraying nipple pulsed against the restraint of the clinging material, his thumb catching and circling the hardened bud, making her moan aloud in wild expression of her need.

‘Oh, yes, this.’

It was a low, dark undertone, with fiendish laughter running through it. Laughter that darkened even further as his urgent fingers tugged at the strap of her costume, wrenching it down over her shoulder, imprisoning her arm against her side and exposing the white slope of her upper breast.

While the hard warmth of his hand supported the soft weight, his hungry mouth sought the exposed flesh, kissing, licking, even nipping lightly at the smooth skin until Skye flung back her head and moaned aloud.

‘This is what I want,’ he muttered harshly against her. ‘And it’s what you want too. What we both want more than all the world. It’s what’s between us, lady. You can’t fight it, and neither can I.’

The only response Skye could manage was a wild, indeterminate sound that could have been either acceptance or denial, but clearly Theo took it as acceptance.

‘Come with me, my lovely. Come with me now…’

‘No!’

Skye had no idea just what it was that jolted her out of the heated fantasy into which she’d fallen. She didn’t know if it was some faint, unexpected sound that intruded in her mental delirium, or the way that Theo’s mouth had left her breast or the sudden cooling touch of a tiny breeze that wafted its way across her exposed skin. She only knew that some unexpected sneaking coldness had slipped into her mind, dousing the heat that raged, stunning her into shocked realisation of just what she was doing.

‘I said no!’

Desperation gave her a strength she hadn’t known she possessed so that she could push him away, hard, the force of the movement driving him almost to the edge of the pool. But he recovered in a second, whirling back to face her, black eyes glittering in cold rage.

‘What do you mean—?’

‘Oh, come on!’

The frantic tattoo her heart was beating at the thought of the narrow escape she had just had, the shivering sensation brought by the realisation of how close she had come to total disaster, made Skye’s voice range up and down in panic, but at least she sounded strong enough and determined enough to make him stop and listen to her.

‘What part of no don’t you understand? You may be Greek, Kyrios Antonakos, but your English isn’t as bad as that. You know exactly what I meant!’

‘I know what you said,’ Theo flung back venomously. ‘But that isn’t exactly what you meant. And I don’t need to know any English at all to differentiate between the two. I have other ways of interpreting that.’

‘Other ways?’

For a moment Skye simply gaped in blank confusion, but then he gave a slow, deliberate glance from those polished jet eyes, away from her face and dropping down to rest on her still-exposed breast—and the betraying tightness of the pouting nipple, blatant evidence to anyone who wanted to look of the hunger he had roused in her. A hunger that was still clawing at her insides, making it almost impossible to think beyond the burning sense of need.

But she had to think. She had to stop feeling and force her mind to concentrate on what really mattered. She had almost ruined everything. Almost destroyed her chances of rescuing her family from the total disaster that faced them. The man before her, tall and strong, with the sunlight playing on the silken black hair, the bronzed skin of his face and chest, might be everything she most wanted in the world right now, but she had to force that weak, indulgent feeling from her mind and think.

And what she had to think was that this must not, could not, happen.

If she wanted to save her family, then Theo Antonakos was forbidden to her.

And so she wrenched up the dangling strap of the swimming costume, wincing in distress as the white Lycra scraped over the sensitised tip of her aching breast. Pulling the little clothing she had as high as it would go, she forced herself to face Theo’s cold-eyed fury with what she hoped looked like a degree of calm she was far from feeling.

‘I don’t give a damn about your “other ways”!’ she managed, the brutal control she was exerting over her voice making it sound high and tight, and absolutely cold with rejection. ‘The one thing you listen to is what I say! And what I say is no—got that? N-O. No! I’m saying no and I mean no.’

For one fearful second there was such a maelstrom of rage in his face, blazing in his eyes, that she actually feared he would ignore her and reach out, grab her once again. She had nerved herself for flight when she saw him recollect himself, shake his head faintly and impose a degree of control over his actions that she had to admire even as she welcomed it with a shaking rush of relief.

But if Theo had controlled his physical impulses, he had not yet restrained his tongue.

‘You say that now, sweetheart,’ he declared with brutal cynicism, ‘but that no was a long time coming. So tell me, my lovely, what was it that forced the rejection from you? Was it the thought that someone else might see us—your mama perhaps?’

‘Mama?’ Skye echoed blankly, unable to believe he had used the word. Had he really said…?

‘Because if that’s what it was, my angel, then I’m certain you don’t need to worry. I’m sure she’d be perfectly happy for us both.’

‘Happy?’

Just what was he talking about? Every word confused her even more. What had her mother to do with this? Did Theo know…?

‘Keep it in the family, so to speak. Your mother, my father—you and me.’

Your mother, my father…

Skye’s thoughts reeled sickeningly. He thought her mother was his father’s fiancée! He actually believed that she was here with her mother and that her mother was the one about to marry Cyril Antonakos!

‘Well?’

Skye’s silence, the stunned look on her face, puzzled Theo. Defiance he could understand; even anger would be perfectly explicable. But all the anger that had burned in her seemed to have fizzled out, subsiding like a damp squib that had never actually exploded.

And in a way that disappointed him.

He was spoiling for a fight. Had been ever since she had tried to claim that she didn’t want him any more. It stung his pride to hear her declare that, especially when a tension in the sexy body in the clinging white swimsuit and a particular light in the depths of those dove-grey eyes revealed the statement for the lie that it was.

She couldn’t have been more aware of him if she had been a nervous young deer who had come upon a hunting tiger in the middle of a clearing. She seemed unaware of the way that she was uneasily shifting her weight from one foot to another, her eyes warily watching his slightest move. Even the fine nostrils seemed to flare in apprehension every time he moved or spoke.

Like hell, she’d had enough of him! Just as there was no way that he had ever tired of her.

Anger and hurt pride had pushed him into action, making him pull her close. And her reaction had been everything that he had anticipated. Everything he had wanted. She had turned to flames in his arms, going up like the driest of kindling laid at the base of a fire, her passion so fierce that he had almost felt his skin might have melted in the heat of it. She had responded to his kiss with all the hunger and the desire that he’d dreamed of.

And he had been lost. Swamped by heat and desire; his body hardening in a second. He had lost all awareness of where he was.

He had thought that he had taken her along with him. Her responses had been everything he could have wanted, her kisses adding fuel to the fires blazing within him. He had been so sure that she was his. That once more he would have her in his bed—and that this time he would make sure it was for much longer than one night.

One night with her had already taught him that it was nowhere near long enough to sate himself on her body. One night had only made him realise what hunger really was and how much he wanted this woman in his bed. Finding her here like this, after his vain search for her in London, had been such an unexpected thrill and he was prepared to do whatever it took to keep her here.

The fight, the tension between them had only added to the electrical current of desire that sparked his appetite for her. And her sudden rejection of him, the way she had pulled away, had left him fiercely frustrated, his aroused body ready to take the satisfaction it needed.

Now she had just backed down.

Apparently with nothing to say, she was simply staring at him as if he had suddenly grown an extra head, her big eyes wide and clouded with something that looked like shock.

‘Well?’ he repeated. ‘What do you say?’

‘I…’ she began, but her voice trailed off, dying into silence once again.

Theo’s hands clamped tight shut at his sides, struggling to resist the urge to shake her from this trance she seemed to have fallen into.

‘Skye!’

But as he spoke another voice came from the direction of the house, breaking into what he had been about to say and silencing him too.

‘Theo! There you are! Amalthea said you had arrived.’

Taken by surprise, Theo muttered a dark curse under his breath. His father’s appearance was the last thing he wanted right now.

After five years’ estrangement, not speaking, not even sending letters, this first meeting with Cyril was going to be awkward enough without anyone else there. The presence of someone else—and just who that someone was—was a complication he could do without.

‘Pateras.’

A sudden movement drew his eyes from the dark, heavyset man now approaching and back to Skye. She had snatched up the white towel from the ground and was once more knotting it hastily round her body. Such unexpected modesty on her part frankly surprised him. And so did her sudden loss of colour. Every trace of blood had ebbed from her cheeks, leaving her looking strained and almost ill, the wide grey eyes huge pools above the ashen cheeks.

‘Skye?’

It came out on an undertone of concern, keeping the lowvoiced question from his father’s hearing. Theo knew better than most that the older man could be difficult and autocratic in his business dealings and with other men. But with women—particularly young, attractive women—he was usually a practised charmer, unlikely to cause such a panicstricken reaction in any member of the opposite sex.

So was there some tension between his father and Skye Marston that he knew nothing about? It was going to make for an awkward relationship between Cyril and his about-to-be stepdaughter if that was the case.

But Skye had already turned away from him and was watching Cyril’s approach, her face hidden so that he couldn’t read any further changes in her expression.

‘So you two have met already.’

If there was something wrong, then clearly Cyril wasn’t aware of it as he directed a smile straight into Skye’s face. His greeting of his son was more restrained, his expression several degrees short of warm, but he took the hand that Theo offered him and shook it hard.

‘Good to have you back under my roof again, boy.’

That ‘boy’ grated as Theo was sure it was supposed to. His father had never accepted that he had grown up long ago. That had been one of the reasons for their estrangement.

But he had promised himself that this time he would really try to keep the peace.

‘I couldn’t miss the wedding,’ he said, unable to erase the stiffness from his tone.

‘Of course not. And you had to meet your new step-mother—which I see you’ve already done.’

Already done?

Thoughts spinning, Theo tried to force the words to make sense, but failed completely. There was no logic to them—not unless…

Hell—no! His mind revolted at the thought. He refused to accept the way he was thinking. It was impossible—had to be.

But his father’s arm had gone around Skye’s waist, and he was turning her round to face his son. ‘Still, I’ll do the formal introductions now.’

No! Theo wanted to shout it at the top of his voice to drown out what was coming. He wanted to put his hands over his father’s mouth to stop him speaking—anything—stem the flow of words that seemed to be leading inexorably to the most appalling conclusion.

It couldn’t be—Theos, let it not be possible.

But Skye’s cheeks seemed to have grown even paler. And her huge light grey eyes looked anywhere but into his face as his father continued blithely with his announcement, totally unaware of the impact it was having.

‘Theo, I want you to meet Skye Marston, soon to be Skye Antonakos. Your new stepmother-to-be and, of course, my fiancée.’




CHAPTER SIX


IF LOOKS could kill then she would have died a thousand times over tonight, Skye thought miserably as she tried once more to make a pretence of eating the meal that had been put in front of her. The cold blaze of fury in the black eyes of the man sitting opposite felt as if it had the power to shrivel her into nothing where she sat, reducing her to just a small bundle of ashes on her chair.

She wished that the earth would just open and swallow her up, anything so that she didn’t have to be here. She would much rather have escaped to her room and stayed hidden there all night.

But there was no escape. Cyril Antonakos liked a formal dinner in the evenings and he expected his family and guests to dress up for it. So she had been forced to put on the elegant peacock-blue silk dress he had told her to wear, pin her hair up into an elegant roll at the back of her head and sit down at the big wooden table to endure the worst sort of torture by food.

She had no idea at all what she was supposed to be eating, only that it had as much taste and texture as stewed sawdust and that it was impossible to swallow anything because her throat seemed to have closed up completely.

And the all the time Theo Antonakos was watching her like a hawk eyeing its prey, watching, waiting, judging the best time to swoop down and pounce. And just like some tiny, shivering dormouse cowering on the ground and watching the shadow of the predator’s wings circling overhead, she had no doubt that when he did decide to act, then the attack would be swift, merciless—and totally lethal.

She was just surprised that he hadn’t denounced her to his father from the first moment he had realised who she was. She had fully expected the condemnation to come as soon as the introduction had been made and her heart had stopped beating, her breath catching in her throat as she’d waited for the words that would ruin her and her family and bring the whole delicate structure of Cyril’s unexpected offer to rescue them tumbling down around her.

But to her astonishment it hadn’t happened. Somehow Theo had controlled the burn of fury deep inside him, though, seeing the anger that had blazed in his eyes, Skye had recognised that it was there and only the most savage and ruthless control was what held it back, kept it from showing in his voice when he had replied to his father’s introduction.

‘Ms Marston and I had just made ourselves known to each other,’ he said smoothly. So smoothly that Skye actually blinked hard in shock at the skilful way he managed to fake an easy calm that he was clearly so very far from feeling. ‘You’re a lucky man, Father, to have such a beautiful fiancée.’

And then, when she was least expecting it, and when she certainly wasn’t at all emotionally prepared, he shocked her rigid by holding out his hand to her in a pretence of a formal greeting.

‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms Marston.’

That ‘pleasure’ was laced with a darkly sardonic intonation that turned it into a mockery of the true meaning of the word.

And it made Skye recall, so unwillingly, the way that earlier he had taunted her, ‘Do we shake hands formally and really do everything totally back to front?’

The memory almost made her snatch her hand away, jumping back from the burn of his skin against hers, the pressure of palm on palm. But to do that was to risk alerting his father to the fact that something was wrong. At the moment, Cyril Antonakos was beaming with proud satisfaction as he watched what he believed was the first meeting between his fiancée and the estranged son who had newly returned home. How quickly that smile would fade, his mood changing rapidly if he was even to suspect that they had met before—never mind realising in what circumstances that meeting had taken place.

Just thinking of it made Skye’s hand shudder still within Theo’s grasp, and feeling it he tightened his grip on her cruelly. Looking into the black depths of his eyes, she saw the danger that smouldered there, searing over her face in a look of pure contempt. It was as if he was sending her a wordless message through the merciless pressure on her fingers.

‘I can break you as quickly and easily as I can crush your hand,’ he seemed to be saying. ‘And I will—as and when I want to.’

She had been waiting for him to act ever since. All through the painfully awkward moments after Cyril’s arrival, and Theo’s realisation of just what her position in his family was. Then she had had to go to her room to shower and change, and get ready for the evening. She had had to leave father and son alone then, unable to find any excuse to stay with them, but she had rushed through her preparations, terrified by the thought that when she returned to the main living room Theo might have decided to tell his father the truth, and all hell would have broken loose.

She had nerved herself to see a dark scowl on the older man’s face. A smug, cruel satisfaction lighting his son’s black eyes. Struggling with the fear that gripped her at the thought that she might be told to pack her bags and go home—and that her father, her family, could rot in hell—she had found that her legs were trembling so hard they would barely support her as she’d made her way from her bedroom on the lower floor and into the airy white-painted living room.

But Theo had said nothing, it seemed. If he had then Cyril would not have come forward with a smile to give her his usual peck on the cheek, and offer her a drink.

‘We’re having champagne tonight, my dear,’ he said. ‘It is, after all, a time for celebration.’

‘The return of the prodigal son,’ Theo supplied dryly.

Like his father, he got up from his seat as she came into the room and was holding out to her a delicate crystal flute filled with bubbling pale wine.

‘And of course to celebrate your own arrival into the family.’

He was so close to her that there was no way his father could have seen the cold black stare that accompanied the apparently welcoming words. But Skye saw it, and as a result her hand shook so violently as she took her drink that some of the champagne slopped over the edge and spilled onto the fine silk of her skirt.

‘Careful,’ Theo said. ‘You don’t want to spoil things.’

He smiled as he spoke, but the icy glitter of his eyes, and the soft but deadly menace of his tone, left Skye in no doubt at all that the warning was meant in a way that was very different from a concern about her dress.

As a result she had been desperately on edge all evening, waiting for the axe to fall, for Theo to speak out and reveal the dark secret that would ruin everything.

But for now he was clearly biding his time, and hiding his cruel intent behind a smiling mask.

‘So how did you two meet?’ he asked now, pushing aside his plate and leaning back in his chair, a glass of rich red wine in one hand.

It was an innocent enough question—on the surface at least. But underneath the lazily drawled words lurked so many dangerous rocks that could sink her totally if she wasn’t careful.

Instinctively Skye turned to Cyril, conceding to him automatically. When he had come up with his proposal, he had insisted on absolute secrecy. Their marriage was to look genuine, with no hint of the deal behind it, and of course both Skye and her father had been only too glad to agree.

‘Business,’ was what he said, helping himself to another portion of the rich baklava that had formed their dessert. ‘Skye’s father runs a couple of my hotels in England.’

‘In London?’ Both Theo’s tone and his eyes had sharpened and Skye shivered faintly, knowing where his thoughts were heading.

‘No—Suffolk. Country house hotels—part of the group but out of the capital.’

‘But Suffolk isn’t far from London, is it?’

Theo raised his glass to his lips, sipped slowly, black eyes moving to lock with grey over the top of it. His fierce, unwavering gaze held hers mesmerically.

‘Do you go into London very often, Kyria Marston?’

‘Skye, please.’

She forced it from between lips that felt as if they were carved from wood.

‘And, no—I don’t go into London.’

‘Not at all?’

Careful! Skye warned herself. One false step and he would swoop like that hunting eagle. But she didn’t want him to think he had her on the run. It might feel like that, of course—she was very definitely trapped with her back against a wall, but she was damned if she was going to run away in panic and leave the field to him. She might just as well surrender right here and now and tell Cyril the truth about their meeting herself.

She could at least give Theo Antonakos a run for his money.

Deliberately she picked up her own glass, swirled the wine around in the bottom of it, then looked him straight in the eye again.

‘Well, obviously, I do go to London every now and then—but not often. And to tell you the truth, I can’t remember the last time I was there.’

Her defiance caught his attention. One black brow lifted sharply in sardonic response and he inclined his dark head in a small acknowledgement of the way she had parried his attack.

Oh, but she was good, Theo admitted to himself. This Skye Marston was a superb actress—so good that, if he didn’t now know exactly what was going on, he would have been totally convinced by her performance.

He had met her precisely twice—for less than a day at a time—and on those occasions she had been perhaps half a dozen different women, changing her personality and her behaviour as quickly and easily as he changed his clothes.

Looking at her now, no one would ever guess that she had been that nervous, distressed creature in the London bar, let alone the wild, passionate woman who had been in his bed that night.

Now here she was the picture of cool elegance in that sleek turquoise silk dress, sleeveless and with a deep vee neckline. Silver glittered at her ears and around the long graceful neck, exposed by the way she had piled that glorious rich coloured hair up at the back of her neck, and she looked calm, relaxed and totally in control.

But she couldn’t really be in control, any more than he could. She had to know that their shared secret was there, between them, like a dark shadow.

He lifted his glass again to drink, then reconsidered and only pretended to sip from it. His head was clouded enough. His thoughts had been reeling since the instant in which his father’s announcement had hit him like a punch to his jaw, and he still hadn’t decided what to do about it.

‘You don’t want to go out—to clubs—or bars?’

He wasn’t quite sure who was watching whom—only that it seemed to him as if there were no one in the room but the two of them. His father might have disappeared completely, and the quiet, decorous presence of a couple of maids barely impinged on his consciousness.

‘Skye doesn’t frequent clubs and such.’

It was Cyril who answered, reminding Theo sharply of the fact that he was there, at the head of the table. That this was his house—his father’s home—and the woman opposite was his father’s future bride.

‘That’s one of the things that attracted me to her. Her innocence. She’s not like so many modern young women.’

This time Theo really did have to gulp down a large mouthful of his wine, if only to stop himself from laughing out loud, or making some cynical comment, revealing just precisely how he felt about that statement.

So she had his father totally conned. The old man had no idea at all what she was really like.

So why didn’t he just tell him? Why didn’t he just open his mouth and say the words?

Your fiancée is not at all the woman you think she is.

The words sounded so clearly inside his head that for one heart-stopping moment he almost thought he’d said them aloud and froze, waiting for the explosion that would follow.

But nothing happened. The declaration had just been in his imagination and the conversation continued just as be-fore—his father blithely ignorant of the emotional grenade that had almost exploded right in his face.

Because that was the effect it would have had. In one split second, Cyril Antonakos would have gone from being the proudly possessive fiancé of a beautiful, stylish, sexy…

Oh, Theos, so devastatingly sexy…

A gorgeous, glamorous, much younger woman.

One moment, Cyril would have been the envy of all men with such a woman on his arm—the next he would have known the sordid truth.

‘Her mother has been unwell. So Skye spends most of her time at home, caring for her.’

Except when she’s out trawling bars, picking up strange men…

Once more Theo had to bite down hard on his lower lip to stop the words from escaping.

Skye’s stunning eyes had dropped, staring down at her hands on the table, and it was all he could do not to laugh out loud in cynical admiration. As a pose of innocent modesty, it was damn near perfect—except that he knew it was a lie and so did she.

So why didn’t he just admit it? Why didn’t he announce to his father that the woman Cyril thought was a sweet, unworldly, family type wasn’t anything of the sort?

Because if he did then, as well as damning her, he would destroy himself in his father’s eyes. In fact, he would probably end up painted as the villain of the piece and Cyril would turn his back on him once and for all—for good this time. His father would cut him out of his life without a second thought.

And he had vowed that if his father ever held out an olive branch of peace he would grab it with both hands. That he would do everything in his power to repair the breach that had come between them; end the estrangement if he possibly could.

That was why he was here now. Why he had come to be the best man at the wedding—unaware of just who the bride his father had chosen was. He knew what interpretation his father would probably put on it. That he had come crawling back because he thought that doing so would change Cyril’s mind about cutting him out of his will.

Well, if that was the case, then he would take a great delight in letting the old man know that he had no need at all of anyone else’s money. He had more than enough of his own.

But this island was a very different matter. Helikos had come to Cyril through his first wife—Theo’s mother. It had been in her family for centuries. Calista Antonakos had been buried here, as had both her father and mother before her. It was Theo’s rightful inheritance, and one he would fight for with the last strength in his body. He certainly didn’t intend to lose it because of some little gold-digger who had caught his father’s attention. This year’s wife who, if she followed the example of every other Kyria Antonakos, would be here and gone again in the space of a couple of years.

‘That is unusual,’ he managed, knowing from the tiny flicker of a glance in his direction that Skye was unable to control that the acid tone of the words hadn’t been lost on her. ‘I have to admit that in anyone else I might find it hard to accept about any modern young woman. But, having met your lovely fiancée, I can believe anything of her. Why, when I first encountered her this afternoon, she was embarrassed at being caught in just her swimming costume—in spite of the fact that it was a far more modest design than so many I have seen.’

She was listening hard again. All her attention was focused on his face, and the way those slender, elegant hands were nervously folding her napkin over and over on itself betrayed the inner tension that she had managed to smooth from her expression. She was not at all sure just in what direction he was going to take this and that thought gave him an intense, dark satisfaction.

He waited a nicely calculated moment before continuing with deliberate casualness.

‘In fact, there was one woman I met last weekend…She was exactly Skye’s age—and build—but the skirt she wore was barely there. She was probably showing far more flesh than you were this afternoon, Stepmama.’

Oh, she didn’t like that! She had definitely winced at that ‘Stepmama’, flinching back in her chair at his tone.

‘So it was hardly surprising that she got herself into trouble with some roughs in a bar—’

But Skye had clearly had enough. Dropping the napkin down on the table, she suddenly met his mocking gaze head on, a new flame of bravado in her soft grey eyes.

‘That’s precisely why I never go into bars or clubs if I can help it!’ she declared defiantly. ‘You can never tell what sort of thug you might meet there.’

Thug! It was meant to sting and it did.

Whatever else he had been that night, thug didn’t describe it. He had treated her as well as she had any right to expect, when she had come on to him as she had. But of course she would want to make out that she had been the innocent in all this, to win the sympathy vote, just in case Cyril ever found out the truth.

A black tide of rage swamped his mind, drowning all rational thought, and his hand clenched so tightly on the stem of the wineglass that he was within an inch of snapping it sharply in two.

He couldn’t stand to be in the room with the lying, conniving little bitch any longer. He had to get out of here or explode. And if he did lose his temper, then he would take Skye Marston and her calculated play-acting with him. He would tell the truth about their meeting—give his father every single gory detail, and then walk out while the shock waves were reverberating round the house.

But those shock waves would damage his world too. They would take the fragile peace he had made with his father and shatter it irrevocably into tiny, irreparable pieces. If he took Skye Marston down, then she would take his last chance of inheriting Helikos with her. And he wasn’t prepared to let that go.

Not for a cheap little tramp who was clearly well practised in lying through her teeth.

‘Well, you don’t need to worry about getting rid of me,’ he said, tossing down his own napkin and getting to his feet. He directed what he hoped was obviously a fake smile of understanding, his gaze going to where his father’s hand still rested on her arm.

‘I can see that you two would obviously like to be alone—and I’d hate to intrude. Besides, I’m expecting a call from a young lady.’

It was only his secretary with news of a contract he was working on, but hell would freeze over before he would admit to that.

‘So I’ll say goodnight, Father—Stepmama. And I’ll see you in the morning.’

He was proud of the way that he managed to stroll from the room. Pleased with the fact that he didn’t pause or look back, or even show that he gave a damn about what he was leaving behind him. He knew he appeared relaxed, casual and totally at ease.

The truth couldn’t be more different.

Because, no matter how much he might tell himself that he had kept quiet only because of Helikos, he knew that the real truth was much more complicated than that. Ever since that night they had spent together in London he hadn’t been able to get the searingly erotic images of Skye Marston out of his thoughts—and he still couldn’t. Just sitting opposite her had set off a string of heated images that circled over and over in his thoughts until he felt he would go mad.

He didn’t want to think of them—didn’t want to think of her.

But the truth was that he could think of nothing else.




CHAPTER SEVEN


HE MIGHT as well face facts; he was never going to sleep.

Theo finally admitted to himself that he had no chance at all of drifting into the welcome unconsciousness of slumber, no matter how hard he tried.

He had been tossing and turning in his bed for an hour or more now, and even working on the intensely boring business documents he had tried to use to numb his mind into sleeping had not had the desired effect. He was as wide awake as he had been when he’d left the dining table—wider, in fact, as his struggle not to think of Skye Marston had left him feeling more and more restless with each second that passed.

Eventually he gave up completely, tossed the file down onto the floor, flung himself out of bed and dragged on the pair of swimming shorts that he had discarded earlier.

He had wanted to swim earlier and had been frustrated. Finding Skye in the pool had driven every other thought from his head.

But now he felt so restless and edgy, with a tension building up inside him like the growing oppression before a storm. He had to act or explode. He had to do something! And exercise was the sanest, the safest thing he could think of.

Swimming in the still of the night, with only the moon for light, was a calming, relaxing experience. There was no one around, only the sound of an owl hooting once or twice to disturb the silence. Theo swam the length of the pool over and over and over again, backwards and forwards. Long, powerful strokes swept through the water, his muscular legs kicked again and again, until at last he felt a degree of peace descend on him.

Slowly, he began to tire, but still he pushed himself harder and further until his muscles ached and his breathing had a raw edge to it.

‘Enough,’ he muttered at one last turn. ‘Enough.’

Now, at last, he felt he might sleep.

If he could just keep Skye Marston from his mind then he might actually get some rest. It was after one in the morning, time to go to bed.

The single-storeyed pool house was in darkness. Only a small lamp by the door glowed to break up the pitch-black that came from being so far out in the country without a single street lamp for miles. But Theo knew his way around from growing up here as a boy. Shaking the water drops from his soaked hair, he padded into the hall, confident and sure on bare feet. Pausing only to snatch up a towel from a hook in the shower room, he made his way to the kitchen, rubbing himself dry as he went.

The light switch was to his left. Not even needing to look, he reached out a hand and clicked it on.

And froze in shock at the sight of the silent female figure sitting at the kitchen table, her face pale, her back stiffly upright, and her hands folded on the surface in front of her.

She was dressed in just a simple white tee shirt and jeans, her feet bare. The long red hair was loose and fell unstyled over her shoulders and down her back; there was no trace of make-up at all that he could see on her pale, soft face, and she looked stunning.

So stunning that he cursed the kick his heart gave just at the sight of her. The next moment he instinctively moved the towel he was holding so that it fell down in front of him, hiding the instant hardness that strained against the front of his shorts. How could he still respond to just the sight of this woman like this when he now knew just what she was?

An hour’s swim in the cool water of the swimming pool and he still felt like this! Hot and hungry in the space of a heartbeat. He was frankly surprised that the remains of the water on his body weren’t evaporating from the heat of his skin in a cloud of steam. What he needed was to go and plunge back into the water.

That or a very long, very cold shower.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Waiting for you,’ Skye said quietly. ‘We have to talk.’

‘No, we don’t. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want and I don’t want to talk to you.’

Skye drew in a deep breath and carefully tried to adjust her thoughts, find the new approach that would fit better with this obviously truculent mood he was in.

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Maybe you do—though I don’t see why. Seems to me you made your decision about things a week ago when you decided to use me for a one-night stand and then disappear out of my life—back to my father’s bed.’

‘Oh, no!’

That brought her head up sharply. She couldn’t have him believing that! The situation was bad enough as it was, but she couldn’t let him continue to think that way.

‘I never—I mean—we never…We don’t share a bed, your father and I. And we’ve never…’

Her voice trailed off as Theo slashed a hand through the air in a brutal silencing gesture.

‘Enough!’ he declared harshly. ‘Way too much information. Though at least I’m spared the worry that my papa might start banging on the door, demanding to be let in, having woken in the middle of the night and found that his fiancée has crept away from his bed for a midnight assignation with his son.’

There was such savage anger in the last words that Skye found herself flinching back in her chair, fearful of the cold fury in his voice. But Theo made no move towards her. In fact, from the moment that he had come in the door and found her sitting here, he hadn’t moved an inch. Instead he was standing stock still, just as he had when he’d flicked on the light to see her.

‘N-no—that won’t happen.’

The shake in her voice didn’t come from the moment of fear. Instead, it was all purely feminine awareness. She desperately needed to get her thoughts and her feelings under control so that she could function properly. But functioning at all was almost beyond her; functioning properly was entirely out of the question. And it became more difficult with every second that passed simply because of the way that Theo looked.

She knew he’d been swimming because she’d heard the faint splashing of the water as she’d made her way up from the lower level where her bedroom was to the main terrace. She hadn’t dared to use the lift inside the house in case Cyril woke and heard its faint hum and came to see what was going on, so she had used the outdoor stairs that were carved into the rock of the cliffside, moving hesitantly in the dimly lit darkness.

The moon had been shining down on the swimming pool as she’d passed it, keeping closely to the shadows so as not to be seen. And in the pale light she had seen Theo’s dark head, the flash of his muscular arms as he powered through the water, from one end to the next—a swift, neat turn, and back again. Again and again.

The moonlight had turned him into an eerie, almost unearthly being. His broad chest and back had been bathed with silver, gleaming and beautiful, making her think of a dolphin she had seen out in the bay only that morning. She had stayed there for a few stolen minutes, watching hypnotised, unable to turn away. Her mouth had dried and her heart felt as if it were beating a rapid tattoo in her chest. She could have stayed there all night, but the sudden fear of being seen, either by the man in the pool or his father, had pushed her into action. Fear had sent her hurrying to the pool house where she had waited, nerves stretched taut with apprehension, until she had heard Theo come in the door.

When he’d switched the light on, all the feelings she had experienced outside had flooded back in full force. But in a very different way.

Where outside he had been silver and darkness, elemental, ethereal, a fantasy of a merman, here he was heat and light and physical strength. He was a real man with warm, bronzed skin, still spattered lightly with sparkling water drops. His black eyes burned under lush, thick lashes, and the blood that pulsed through his veins made his body glow with health and masculine vigour.

The moon man had made her heart catch in admiration and astonishment, but she had only wanted to watch and keep her distance from him. This man made her think of life and passion and sex and her own blood heated at the memory of how it had felt to be held in his arms, her head pillowed on the hard, warm width of that chest.

‘Your father is fast asleep. I heard him snoring. He had plenty to drink at dinner.’

‘So did I, but it didn’t exactly guarantee a night’s sleep.’

Theo rubbed the towel over his still wet hair, ruffling it in a way that Skye found shockingly endearing. He looked suddenly young and almost boyish in a way that she would be all kinds of a fool to even think of believing. Theo Antonakos was no boy—and she would do well to remember that. He was all man—and hard and dangerous with it.

‘If it had, you wouldn’t have found the house empty when you arrived.’

He paused, cold black eyes searing over her in sharp assessment.

‘Or was that the idea? Did you have plans of sneaking into my bed and seducing—?’

‘No!’

She couldn’t even let him finish the appalling sentence. Couldn’t let him allow even the thought of such a thing into his mind.

‘No way! That wasn’t what I had in mind at all. As I said, I came to talk.’

Theo’s sigh was weary, resigned, as he raked a hand through his damp hair and slicked it back from his face.

‘Then can it wait until I put some clothes on?’

‘Oh—yes—sorry—of course.’

She was gabbling like an idiot, wondering if he had caught her watching him like a child in a sweet shop, almost drooling over the delights on show.

She must not think like that. Think practical, Skye. Find something to do—to distract you. If she even let in the thought of him stripping off those clinging swimming shorts, rubbing the big body dry…

No!

Such thoughts were far too dangerous to her peace of mind.

What peace of mind? She hadn’t known any such thing since that night, when Theo Antonakos had come into her life like a nuclear explosion. And now she was struggling to deal with the devastation that was the aftermath.

‘Of course. You go and change. Shall I make some coffee?’

‘You really do want to make sure that I have no chance at all of sleeping tonight, don’t you? No coffee. And no wine. Seems to me I’m going to need a clear head for this. There’s some mineral water in the fridge. Glasses in the cupboard above it.’

He had disappeared in the direction of the bedroom by the time that any of his comments really registered on Skye’s already jumbled brain.

You really do want to make sure that I have no chance at all of sleeping tonight, don’t you?

Had he meant that, like her, he had been lying awake, unable to sleep? Was that why he had taken to swimming in the middle of the night?

And if so, then what sort of thoughts had kept him awake and restless?

Don’t go there! she told herself. Don’t risk it!

Because the truth was that she didn’t know which was the greater risk to her mental balance: knowing that Theo had lain awake thinking of her—or knowing that he had not.

She didn’t have time to think, anyway. She had barely found the water and the glasses before Theo was back with her.

He had pulled on a loose navy tee shirt and a pair of jogging trousers. Both items were old and baggy and shouldn’t have been sexy at all. But it didn’t matter what this man wore, he still took her breath away. Perhaps it was because she knew, and remembered so well, just what the body underneath the clothes was like, so that he could have worn an old sack and still have had the impact of a blow to her heart.

She had a nasty little flght with herself to keep her hand from shaking as she filled a glass with the sparkling water and held it out to him. The faint brush of his fingers as he took it from her sent a sensation like an electric shock shooting up her arm and to disguise the betraying reaction she reached for her own glass and gulped down half of it without pausing for breath.

‘So talk.’ Theo had barely touched his own drink before putting the glass back down on the table. He leaned against the wall and folded his arms across his chest, narrowed eyes focusing tightly on her face. ‘You said you wanted to talk—so talk.’

‘Are you going to say anything?’

Oh, damn, she hadn’t meant it to come out like that. She’d planned on being calm and reasonable. On coming round to the point gradually. Instead she’d just blurted out what was uppermost in her mind without a second’s thought.

‘About what?’

‘Oh, don’t play games! You know very well about what! Are you going to say anything to your father?’

Theo’s dark head went back, resting against the door post, his black, gleaming stare impenetrable and impassive in a coldly inscrutable face.

‘My father…’ he said at last, drawling the words out with a slow deliberation that tightened nerves already close to snapping until she felt she wanted to scream. ‘Why should I tell him anything?’

‘Oh!’

The unexpected answer was such a relief that all the tension left Skye in a sudden rush so that she sagged against the nearest chair like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The release from tension was so great that her head was spinning with it and she was totally unable to think of anything beyond the feeling of elation that rushed through her like a flood tide.

‘Oh, thank you!’ She gasped. ‘Thank you! Thank…’

The words shrivelled on her lips as her vision cleared and she caught the way he was looking at her. She saw the dark frown that drew his black brows together, the cold, assessing glance from those jet eyes, and suddenly knew she had made a terrible mistake.

‘You…’

‘I’m not going to tell my father anything,’ Theo stated icily. ‘I think that’s your responsibility.’

‘What?’

Skye had been swallowing a sip of water as he spoke and she knew a moment of real horror as her throat seemed to close around the drink, threatening to choke her. It was only with a struggle that she managed to regain control, and gulp it down. But even then her voice on the question was shrill and raw, as if her vocal cords were still tightly twisted.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I know you heard what I said.’

Theo levered himself away from the wall and moved into the adjoining sitting room, flinging himself down into a chair and leaning back, stretching out long legs on the wooden floor in front of him.

‘And I’m damn sure you understood it. So why ask for an explanation? You know this is what you have to do.’

‘But—yes, of course I understand, but…’

Theo’s sigh was a masterpiece—a perfect blend of irritation, impatience and a ruthless control and his eyes were cold as ice floes as he turned them on her.

‘You weren’t thinking of doing anything else?’

‘But I can’t!’

Nightmare visions of the disastrous consequences that would follow if she did as Theo expected filled Skye’s thoughts, leaving her shaking and fighting back tears.

Her whole world would fall apart. No, there would be no world for her if that was to happen. Her family would be destroyed—her father in prison…her mother…

‘I won’t do it! I can’t!’

‘You don’t have any alternative,’ Theo stated with unyielding brutality. ‘Either you tell him or I do.’

Skye closed her eyes against the fear that crawled along her spine. He didn’t know what he was asking. But she couldn’t tell him. She had given her word to Cyril that she would never reveal to anyone the real reason for their marriage, and if she broke it then her father would be in trouble—but her mother would be the one who would suffer.

‘Please don’t do this,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’

‘So what would you prefer I did?’ Theo enquired with dark cynicism. ‘Let my father live a lie—and live one myself by watching him marry you? Dance at your wedding?’

The acid on the words was so savage she felt it would strip the skin from her bones. She wanted to run—to take to her heels and flee, never looking back. But the time for that was long gone; if, indeed, she had ever had a chance. She only had one hope of salvaging anything for her family from this; though even that was impossible if Theo carried out his threat.

‘I’m not asking that.’

Putting down her glass with a hand that shook so much she barely avoided dropping it right onto the wooden floor, she moved to his side, perching herself on the arm of the chair and looking deep into his dark, closed face.

‘But please don’t do this, Theo.’

Something flickered in the blackness of his eyes but, whatever it was, it was definitely not a sign of any weakening or even any concession.

Instead, he regarded her with his face still set in that cold, stony expression, rejection of her plea radiating from him like a force. Talking to him was like banging her head hard against a rough, unyielding wall. It hurt—and it was clearly having very little effect.

But she still had to try.

‘I’m begging you.’

Impulsively she reached forward, grabbed at both his hands, holding them in her own, willing him to listen.

‘Please, Theo.’

Was this the man who had come to her rescue on that night in London? The man who had held her so warmly, who had kissed her so gently. The man who had made love to her so passionately and so wonderfully. Could he even be the same man?

But inside he must remember—inside he must surely still feel…

His face was just inches away from hers now. She could feel his breath on her cheek, sense the sudden change in his heart rate under the worn navy cotton of his tee shirt. As she watched she saw him snatch an uneven breath, saw his tongue sneak out and, very briefly, touch the sensual lips that, she suddenly realised, were surprisingly dry.

So he wasn’t as armoured against her as she had thought! And she most definitely wasn’t immune to him. Sitting this close to him, feeling the warmth of his body, knowing the scent of his skin, she felt the deep, primal hunger beating an erotic pulse through her bloodstream.

And the hunger that he seemed to spark in her just by existing was back, gnawing at her inside, scrambling her thoughts into chaos…

‘Theos! Ochi! Damn you to hell—ochi! No!’

Hard hands clamped around her arms, bruising as they lifted her, wrenched her away from him. She hadn’t realised that she had leaned so close and she was still stumbling mentally through the shocking confusion, not knowing what was happening to her, not understanding, when he stood up abruptly and forcefully.

‘What do you think I am?’

It was a savage roar, one that brought her head up fast—only to drop her gaze just as quickly when she saw the black rage that burned in his face. His height and strength were impressive enough when she was able to face him, standing upright, but now, when his full height towered over her, he was awe-inspiring and more than a little terrifying.

‘Theo…’ she began tentatively, her voice breaking on his name, but she wasn’t sure if he even heard her; and the black blaze of his eyes in the strong-boned face shrivelled any other words in her mouth.

‘What do you think I am?’ he demanded again, low and savage, making her shrink back against the chair, wishing she could become invisible, or disappear. ‘I may not have been on the best of terms with my father over the past years—but do you think I would betray him with you?’

‘No—no—I never meant…’ Skye tried to interject, horrified at the way he had misinterpreted her actions, seeing an attempt at seduction in the way she had been unable to hide her feelings. But he ignored her in his rage and swept on heedlessly.

‘How low do you think I would stoop? How far would you lower yourself to get what you want?’

‘I never—’

‘No?’

A violent, angry gesture dismissed her weak attempt at a protest, almost as if he were throwing her words right out the window.

‘Then what the hell was all that? “Oh, please, Theo…please…’”

Skye could only blink in stunned horror as he suddenly switched to a frighteningly near-accurate copy of her own words, her own voice, and to her shock and distress she caught the note of husky seduction mixed in with the pleading she had aimed for.

‘“I’m begging you, Theo…” Oh, yes—you were begging, all right!’

To her total astonishment he suddenly came forward and held out a hand, clearly intending to help her up. Stunned and bemused, Skye could only take the hand he offered, finding herself wrenched to her feet with a force that almost had her flying to the opposite side of the room.

But Theo caught her, whirled her round back to face him, yanked her close. For a long, long moment he simply stared into her face, but then he reached out his free hand, tracing the side of her face, the contours of her cheek, before he pushed his long, powerful fingers into the fall of her burnished red hair.

‘Oh, I know what you were begging for. What you wanted was this…’

The kiss he dragged her into was hard and rough, cruelly punishing, devastating. It was meant to tell her exactly what he thought of her and it did. It humiliated, angered, shattered her. And it left her shaking in her shoes at just the thought of what was in his mind.

But then just as suddenly that kiss stopped.

It stopped and Theo lifted his head for a moment, drew in a raw, ragged breath. Molten jet eyes blazed down into hers, searing right through to her soul.

‘Oh, yes, my sweet,’ he murmured, soft as a deadly snake. ‘That’s what you want. What you respond to. What you use to try to entice me into doing as you want.’

‘It wasn’t like that…’ Skye tried to whisper, but her tongue seemed to have frozen in her mouth, unable to speak a word, and he either didn’t hear her or ignored her attempt and pushed straight on.

‘And do you know what I hate—what I despise the most? It’s that even now, when I know that everything you are is a lie, that the woman I met, the woman I slept with, was as false as she could be, that she was promised to someone else—to my own father!—you still can’t stop! You still think that you can seduce me round to your way of thinking—to doing what you want me to do. That by offering me your body—’

‘No!’

‘Yes,’ Theo returned harshly. ‘Oh, yes. But it won’t work, agape mou. You don’t catch me that way again. I may have been duped at our first meeting—but I don’t put my head into the noose a second time. Not for anyone—and certainly not for a conniving, scheming little tramp like you’ve proved yourself to be.’

‘No…’ It was all she could manage; all she could think of to say.

But even as she spoke she knew that it was all pointless, that she might just as well have saved herself the effort. Theo wasn’t going to listen to her, and, even if he did, there was no way she could refute the appalling accusations he was throwing at her, not unless she offered him some alternative explanation.

And the only explanation she could offer was the truth. A truth that she was forbidden to tell anyone, that she had sworn to keep to herself. If she let it out, she would ruin so many other lives.

While keeping silent only ruined her own.

‘No?’ Theo scorned. ‘Well, I’m sorry, my angel, but I just don’t believe you.’

His hand came out, slowly, carefully, so that she didn’t have time to react or flinch away.

With the back of one long finger he traced the line of her face, from her temple, down her cheek, along the curve of her jaw. Just for a second, his touch lingered on her mouth, stroking softly, and even though she knew it was impossible, that she was just deceiving herself, in that second, despairingly, Skye would have sworn that the bleak black eyes had been touched with a tiny gleam of regret.

But she had to have been imagining things because the next moment he snatched his hand away, shaking it faintly as if to remove the contamination of her touch. Whatever had been in his eyes vanished completely as his face closed up, harsh and severe, in total rejection of her.

‘You have three days,’ he told her, each word cold and clear and totally obdurate. ‘Three days in which to tell my father the truth. And at the end of that time, if you still haven’t told him—then I promise you I will.’




CHAPTER EIGHT


THREE days.

It hadn’t sounded long when Theo had given Skye the ultimatum. In fact it hadn’t sounded like any time at all.

Three days—just seventy-two hours—in which to find the courage to face Cyril and admit to him what had happened. She didn’t know how she could do it. She only knew that somehow—God knew how—she had to.

But that had been the day before yesterday. Now more than forty-eight hours of the seventy-two had passed—gone. And she was no nearer to bringing herself to do as Theo had ordered.

If anything, she was further away from it than she had ever been.

For one thing, Cyril hadn’t even been in the house most of the time. He had spent a large amount of yesterday in the village and had returned in such a dreadful mood that Skye had hurriedly retired to her room and left him to himself. This morning he had ordered the helicopter to take him to Athens at what seemed like the crack of dawn and hadn’t been seen since.

Skye could only be thankful that Theo too had made himself scarce. The thought of facing him and the inevitable reaction when he discovered that she still hadn’t given in to his demands and told his father the truth made her shiver in genuine fear.

The future seemed dark and bleak, without a single glimmer of hope on the horizon, and she had no idea which way to turn.

If she didn’t tell Cyril, then Theo would. But how could she tell Cyril when doing so would inevitably mean that he would call off the whole engagement and the wedding that was supposed to follow it?

And without that wedding, then her father had no chance of avoiding arrest, because if thwarted then Cyril would surely press charges even more vehemently. And if he was arrested, then her mother…

‘Oh, heaven help me!’

Skye sank down onto the nearest chair and buried her face in her hands, giving in to despair.

She had never felt so lost and alone. So totally abandoned by everyone.

‘Is there a problem?’

She recognised the husky male voice immediately. It was the one that had haunted her dreams, sounded in her head all day long ever since she had heard it issuing the brutal ultimatum that threatened to shatter her life, and that of all the people she loved.

‘Oh, no, there’s no problem!’ she flung at him, her head coming up sharply, auburn hair tossed back over her shoulder, grey eyes blazing defiance. ‘No problem at all! Only the fact that my life finally seemed to be back on some sort of track—one that I could at least cope with. But then I had the misfortune to meet you and now everything’s blown up in my face!’

‘You haven’t told him.’ It was a statement, not a question, but Skye still felt he was waiting for a response to it.

‘No, I haven’t told him!’

If he’d been around in the house, he would have known that. But for his own private reasons Theo had made himself scarce for the past couple of days. Having delivered his ultimatum, he had backed off and left her alone with his father.

Of course, she knew why. He was expecting her to use the time to tell Cyril everything. She supposed that he thought he was being fair—even considerate—by giving her the space and the quiet in which to broach the subject.

Well, he might not have been actually putting pressure on her directly with his words and his presence, but the knowledge that he was there, waiting, watching, like some cruel hunter lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce if she didn’t do as he ordered, had kept her in a permanent state of shivering terror, never knowing when his dark patience would run out and he would move in for the kill.

‘For one thing, I haven’t had an opportunity, and for another—well, I just don’t know how he’s going to react.’

‘That’s something you should have considered before you leapt into bed with a complete stranger.’

The cynicism in Theo’s tone seemed all the worse when Skye admitted to herself just how wonderful he looked. With the afternoon sunlight shining on the glossy black hair, making the dark eyes gleam spectacularly between their frame of thick, lush lashes, he was a Greek god come to life in modern dress. The long, lean legs were clothed in jeans so tight they were positively indecent, and the power of his chest and shoulders was emphasised by the loving cling of the soft tee shirt to the muscled contours. The white material threw the colour of his bronzed skin into sharp relief, his tan already deepened by several days in the Greek sun, and the whole picture was one that made her mouth dry in purely sensual delight.

‘I had no idea that the complete stranger was going to turn out to be my fiancé’s son!’

‘No, I don’t suppose you did,’ Theo drawled, strolling into the room and dropping down into a chair opposite with indolent ease. ‘That was rather unfortunate for you.’

‘Unfortunate!’ Skye echoed sourly. ‘That has to be the understatement of the year!’

‘But would it have made things any more justifiable if I’d been a perfect stranger? You would still have been unfaithful to the man you were engaged to. Or are you one of those people who believe that the crime is not in the actual action, but in getting found out?’

‘Not at all!’ Skye denied his words furiously ‘I don’t expect you to believe me, but I don’t make a habit of indulging in one-night stands with complete strangers!’

‘You’d be wrong about that—I do believe you.’

‘And I wasn’t exactly engaged to your father at the time—’

The sudden realisation of the words he had inserted quietly into her tirade pulled her up sharp, her head spinning in shock.

She couldn’t be hearing properly. Had he said…?

‘What did you say?’ she demanded rawly.

‘That I believe you. That you’re not the type who makes a habit of indulging in one-night stands with complete strangers.’

‘You—you do?’

‘Absolutely.’

Stunned relief and delight flooded through her. Her heart leapt, her spirits lifted. A smile she couldn’t suppress spread wide across her face.

‘That’s wonderful! Fantastic! You can’t imagine the relief that makes me feel…’

But something was wrong.

Very wrong.

The smile slipped a bit, faded, as she realised that there was no answering lightening of Theo’s expression. Instead, his features remained set in the sombre, unyielding cast that they had displayed from the moment he had come into the room.

As sudden doubt crept into her mind and took an uncomfortable hold Skye felt her world tilt on its balance, swaying sickeningly.

‘You didn’t mean it?’ she questioned hesitantly.

‘Oh, yes, I meant it. I could hardly think otherwise—could I? After all, I am only too aware that there hadn’t been any man before me. You were a virgin that night.’

Another statement. A flat, blank-toned question that rocked her back in her seat, making her stare into his dark, shuttered face. Had she failed so completely in her attempt to look and act sophisticated and experienced?

‘I—what—you knew?’

The look Theo shot her was dark with cynical mockery. A black humour that wasn’t echoed in any lightening of his expression, not even the tiniest hint of a curve to his sensual mouth.

‘Oh, yes, I knew. Do you know what that did to me?’

‘You’re angry about that?’

She couldn’t understand his reaction, couldn’t understand what was going through his head at all, and the confusion and uncertainty made her too uncomfortable to sit still. Pushing herself to her feet, she prowled about the room, agonisingly conscious of those deep, dark eyes following her every move until she felt like some specimen under a microscope or a caged animal being closely observed by some coldly analytical scientist.

‘I don’t get it! I don’t understand at all! I—I thought it was a deep-seated male fantasy to be some woman’s first lover. To be the one who took her virginity…’

But she’d hit quite the wrong note there. In trying for a levity she was far from feeling, her words had had the effect of lighting the blue touch-paper and failing to stand well back while the whole multicoloured explosion roared into life right in her face.

Theo hurled himself to his feet in a movement that was so expressive of barely controlled violence that it had her stumbling back behind a chair for protection. His face was twisted into a savage scowl that added to her sense of fearful apprehension.

‘In a sordid one-night stand in a cheap hotel?’ he snarled viciously. ‘Oh, yeah—some fantasy! Your—a woman’s—first time should be something special—something to remember. Not just thrown away!’

He meant it! Skye could hardly believe what she was seeing. Theo truly meant this. It was in his eyes, in his voice.

‘Can’t you see?’ she pleaded with him. ‘That’s why I did it—why I was with you. I didn’t want your—my wedding night to be the first. That’s why I was there.’

She’d thought she could make things better by explaining, but to judge from the change of expression, the searing burn of those deep-set eyes, she’d only managed the exact opposite.

‘To throw it away on any man you met?’

He was taking it exactly the wrong way.

‘Not just any man…’

And it had been special, she told him in the privacy of her thoughts, not daring to let on just how special that night had been. It was bad enough knowing it herself, but if she admitted to even a tiny part of it then she knew that it would rip her to pieces inside.

‘Oh, don’t tell me that you met me and instantly knew I was the love of your life,’ Theo scorned.

‘No—I’m not saying that.’

‘I could have been just anyone.’

‘No!’ Never. ‘And the hotel wasn’t that cheap!’

Oh, why couldn’t she stop? It had been obvious from the start that her attempts to pretend that that night hadn’t mattered so much had failed painfully. Theo’s scowl, the way his black brows were drawn tightly together, the black eyes blazing beneath them were warning enough that she was blundering blindly into a dangerous minefield where at any moment things might blow up in her face. But still she couldn’t help herself. Couldn’t stop herself from blurting out totally inappropriate remarks that were only making matters worse.

‘It was to me!’

The savage declaration made her jump like a startled rabbit. In fact, that was exactly what she felt like as he came towards her—a small, frightened rabbit, transfixed in the beam of a car’s headlights, wishing desperately that she could move.

‘I did exactly what you wanted. Took you exactly where you asked. “A quiet, decent hotel”,’ Theo said, and Skye realised that he was quoting her exactly.

‘But, of course, I didn’t know who you were then. If I had, then I might have…’

Something about the icy glare he turned on her froze the words on her tongue, cutting them off completely. In dawning horror, she realised just what she was saying, the impression she was giving. A hot tide of red swept right across her face and her hands crept up to cover her mouth, trying to hold the dreadful words back.

But of course it was far too late.

‘If you’d known who I was then what, Skye?’ Theo pounced on the foolish sentence. ‘Would you have held out for more, is that it, hmm? Would you have insisted on a five-star place, or asked for more? Traded your virginity for a night in a penthouse suite, perhaps—or a little room service?’

‘I didn’t ask for anything from you!’

‘Only a night of meaningless sex with an anonymous man.’

‘Yes! Yes, that was exactly what I was looking for!’

Skye winced inside at the way that sounded. But she was beyond controlling her voice. Because the truth was that Theo was not reacting in any way as she had anticipated.

Not that she had ever anticipated meeting up with the man with whom she had spent that crazy night in London ever again! She had thought that her one night of breaking out into the freedom that soon would be lost to her for ever would be her secret, and hers alone. That it would be totally anonymous, and no one would know.

But there were two problems with that. One was that in no way at all could the sex have been described as ‘meaningless’. It had been wild; it had been wonderful. It had pitched her straight from blind innocence and ignorance into a world of sensation, of knowing—and of hunger.

It had been special—so very special.

And it had left an indelible mark on her for ever.

But at least she had managed to keep the anonymous part to exactly that. And as a result she had been quite safe. Until she had come here to Helikos and come face to face with a black twist of fate in the form of Theo Antonakos.

‘And that was exactly what I got—and what you got as well. It was what you wanted too! Wasn’t it?’

Had she actually been hoping for something else? If she had, then the stupid thought was crushed out of her by his swift retort.

‘Well, I sure as hell wasn’t looking for marriage!’

‘So there you are—we both got exactly what we were looking for. So why can’t you leave it at that?’

‘You know damn well why!’ he flung at her. ‘Because it can’t be left at that!’

‘Why not? Surely if we just put it all behind us and move on, then it can all be over and done with.’

For Theo at least.

‘That isn’t going to work,’ Theo muttered, shaking his dark head slowly.

‘Why can’t it?’

‘Because of who we are—who you are.’

‘Me?’

‘You’re my father’s fiancée. That’s what makes the difference—all the difference in the world.’

‘But it doesn’t have to,’ Skye protested. ‘Only if we let it.’

‘Skye!’

Her name was a violent sound of outraged fury on his tongue and he raked his hands through his hair, pressing them against the bones of his skull in exasperation.

‘Can’t you see that there is no “if we let it”?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘We have no choice but to let it!’ Theo told her fiercely. ‘You are going to marry my father…and…’

‘And?’ Skye prompted when he fell silent, seeming to hunt for the words.

‘Theos! Can you not see it? Can you not feel it?’

‘F-feel what?’ Skye stammered, though she had a terrible feeling that she knew what was in his thoughts. She knew what she had been hiding from for days and the thought of bringing it out into the open terrified her.

‘This thing that’s between us.’

‘There’s nothing between us,’ Skye put in hastily, terrified to even let the idea into her mind. ‘Nothing at all. I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

Liar! his look said. You know exactly what I mean. Exactly what there is.

‘There’s an atmosphere—almost an electricity that’s in the air between us. I can’t keep my eyes—my hands—off you!’

She actually turned white at the words. He watched the blood drain from her cheeks, leaving them pallid and ashen.

He knew exactly how she was feeling. He’d tried to deny it himself at first. But then, like a fool, he’d kissed her. He’d kissed her in anger and contempt, but it hadn’t stayed that way. Other, more primitive feelings had swept through him like a tidal wave and he’d known just why he couldn’t leave the situation that way—why he couldn’t leave the island though, God help him, he’d tried!

He still wanted her. Wanted her more than ever. He didn’t care if she was a gold-digger, didn’t care about anything but having her back in his bed again.

But she was promised to his father. And he had never taken another man’s woman in his life. He didn’t intend to start now.

But if she were to leave Cyril…

‘It isn’t over between us and you know it.’

‘It is!’ It was a cry of panic, of desperation. ‘It is over! It has to be—I’m marrying your father!’

‘Then don’t!’

There, it was out. Theo told himself. The thing that had been preying on his thoughts all day, every day since the moment he had realised just who she was and why she was here on Helikos. The words that he had been trying not to say, words he had sworn that he would never say, but even as he had done so he had known that he would inevitably one day. He would have to.

For days he’d fought with himself. Fought to stay away from her. Fought the need to be with her. He had set himself to a gruelling regime of exercise, running on the seashore, swimming endless laps of the pool, lifting weights in the small gym his father had had built but had very obviously never used. It had kept him out of her way and it had exhausted his body, but his mind had stayed wide awake.

And at night, in the darkness, the memories had come.

Heated memories of the night they had spent together. The one night when he had known all the sweetness and the passion that her glorious body could offer.

And he had known he wanted more.

The sweetness he wanted to taste all over again. The passion he longed to sate himself on once more.

He had barely managed to cope with the past two days as it was. He had only kept himself from giving in to the magnetic pull her body had for his by telling himself over and over again that she wasn’t available, that she was en-gaged—to his father, for God’s sake!

She was not only not available, she was forbidden!

But even knowing that, he had endured two nights without sleep. Spent two long days fighting the need to see her. Fighting his body’s need to bury himself in her again.

He knew now that that was why he had been so insistent that she tell his father about the night they had spent together. He didn’t just want the truth out in the open; he wanted her free from this impossible engagement.

He wanted her all to himself. And he felt he would go mad if he didn’t have her.

‘Don’t marry my father. You can’t marry him feeling the way you do about—’

‘About you?’ Skye inserted swiftly, jerkily. ‘I don’t feel anything for you!’

‘But you do.’ Theo dismissed her protest with a contemptuous flick of his hand. ‘You feel just the way I do—I can see it in your face. In your eyes whenever I’m near.’

‘You arrogant…’

The negligent shrug of broad shoulders under the white tee shirt showed how little he cared about her accusation.

‘I may be arrogant, but at least I’m honest.’

Deliberately he took a slow step forward, then another, his eyes fixed on her face, watching every flicker of reaction that she was unable to hide. He saw the way her head went back, the sudden change in her breathing, the darkness of her eyes.

‘See?’ was all he said, but he knew she’d got the message. Ruthlessly he pressed home his advantage. ‘Damn you, Skye, think about this—about what will happen when my father finds out…’

‘Why should he find out?’

Her voice had changed again and there was a note in it now that he couldn’t even begin to read. He didn’t know what to feel either. His emotions seemed to be running on a loop of anger, through concern, exasperation, and an irrational, overwhelming desire to grab her, haul her into his arms and kiss her senseless. Kissing seemed to be the only function of that soft, sexy mouth that was simple, uncom-plicated—and totally understandable.

Oh, who was he trying to kid? Kissing her might start out as the most straightforward thing in this whole tangle of knots that simply being with Skye tied him up in, but it would very rapidly turn into the most complex and problematical situation before he had time to breathe. He couldn’t kiss Skye while she was with his father; and, for her own personal, private reasons, she seemed determined to try to hold fast to this appalling engagement.

‘I can’t believe you’re asking me that question.’

‘I could pretend—’

‘Oh, hell, yes, you could!’

Theo couldn’t hold back the cynical laughter that escaped him at the thought.

‘You could pretend, all right—but if you wanted to be convincing you’d have to turn in a performance that’s a damn sight better than the one you’re giving me!’

He’d actually silenced her. For the first time since he’d come into the room and found her sitting on the chair with her head in her hands, she was finally stunned into silence, staring up at him, her face frozen in shock.

‘There’s something else, isn’t there? Something you’re not telling me. Damnation, Skye, just what is going on here?’

Her eyes flinched away from his, dropping down to stare at the carpet with an impossibly fierce concentration.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Don’t give me that!’

Dropping to one knee in front of her, he caught her chin in his hand, pushing it up so that she was forced to meet his gaze. When she tried to pull away he simply clamped his fingers more tightly around her jaw and drew her back inexorably to face him.

‘Tell me!’ he commanded. ‘I want to know just why you are so determined to marry my father.’




CHAPTER NINE


HOW could she ever answer that? Skye asked herself. She was trapped, no matter which way she turned. Tied by so many different promises to so many people, and knowing she had no way out. There was the promise she had made to her father—others to Cyril…

But the one promise that truly mattered to her was the one that she had made in her heart to her mother. Claire Marston knew nothing of the real reasons why her daughter was suddenly going to marry a much older Greek millionaire; she would have been horrified if she did. But in her heart Skye had promised that she would do anything—everything—she could to ensure that her mother had the health and strength to enjoy as much of life as she could. And if that meant giving up some of her own life, her own happiness, in return, then she believed it was worth it.

So now she had only one choice open to her, one path she could possibly follow.

And she took it.

‘Why?’ she echoed with what she hoped was a deceptively lightweight and flippant air. She had started on this coldly casual act to protect herself; she couldn’t afford to let it slip now. ‘Isn’t it obvious? Because he asked me.’

Once again, Theo’s response surprised her. She had expected anger. She had expected contempt. She had expected that he would simply toss her aside—mentally at least—and just walk out. So she was stunned when he shook his head in total rejection of what she was saying.

‘Not good enough,’ he stated with a cold finality.

His absolute calmness was somehow more disturbing than if he had lost his temper and shouted at her. A sudden, scary feeling that she was fighting for her life pushed her towards an even more outrageous declaration.

‘You don’t think that’s good enough? Why ever not?’

Her pause was supposed to give him time to respond, but he didn’t take it. Instead, he seemed to be waiting for her to speak again.

But what could she say? If he only knew it, she had spoken the exact truth when she had given him her answer. Cyril had offered marriage as a way out of the appalling problems that beset her family, and, in despair, with no way to turn, she had accepted him.

‘What’s so difficult to believe about it?’ she demanded, the anguish in her heart putting a sharpness on her tongue that she couldn’t have managed if she’d planned it. ‘Who in their right mind would want to turn down this?’ She waved a hand in an all-encompassing gesture that took in the whole room, the patio out beyond the doors, and the blue water of the swimming pool beyond that. ‘I certainly wasn’t going to.’

It was only when his face changed, his expression hardening, eyes turning to black flint, that she realised how a moment before he had had an entirely different look. She had been near to some sympathy, some understanding from him, and now he had backed away again. Physically as well as mentally.

He had moved back from her; his grip on her jaw loosening. The barriers were up between them once more and it hurt so badly that she had to blink back tears.

But it was better this way.

Safer.

The implications of that word, ‘safer’, were ones she flinched away from admitting to herself. They gave her an idea, though. If she tried to defend herself from Theo’s questions, then she very rapidly found herself with her back against the wall. It was time to stand up for herself—go on the attack instead.

Wrenching her chin free from his loosened grasp, she tried to push Theo aside, get to her feet. But the barrier of his big body offered far more resistance than she had ever imagined. Her push had no effect whatsoever on him, but it made her fingers curl in shock at the sensations that fizzed up her nerves as they encountered the heat and hardness of his powerful chest.

Giving up the attempt to make him move, she scrambled inelegantly off the chair over its arm, turning hastily to confront him while she had the advantage of height because he still knelt on the floor.

‘Why does it matter so much to you what happens between me and your father? I understood that you and he weren’t exactly close.’

She’d got under his guard with that one. She saw it register in the depths of his eyes and knew a shiver of apprehension as his jaw tightened and a muscle in his cheek tugged sharply.

‘Who told you that?’

‘Your father, of course.’

Her throat dried as Theo uncoiled his long body and slowly stood up. Perhaps it was the fact that she had no shoes on and in bare feet was inches smaller, but Skye felt that never before had he seemed so tall, so imposing, so big as when he towered over her now. Her toes curled on the polished wooden floor as she fought against the craven impulse to turn and run.

‘And what did he tell you about it?’

‘That—that you had a disagreement.’

‘Which is something of an understatement.’

The bitter irony of Theo’s response made it plain that it had been anything but a ‘disagreement’.

‘What was it about?’

‘Do you really want to know?’ Theo demanded sharply. ‘Really?’

‘Yes, I do.’ Skye tried to sound much more certain than she actually felt. ‘It might make me understand things more.’

Something in Theo’s expression warned her that that was a vain hope. But she had taken this path now. She was determined to see it through.

‘Tell me,’ she said unevenly.

Theo pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans and strolled away towards the open patio doors where he stood, staring out at the clear blue water of the pool glinting in the sun.

‘My father disowned me because I wouldn’t marry the bride of his choice.’

‘What?’ Skye was stunned. ‘You’re kidding!’

Theo swung round to face her again and the deadly serious cast of his stunning features made the half-laughing protest and disbelief fade rapidly from her face.

‘Do I look as if I am joking?’ he demanded haughtily, his accent sounding very pronounced on the question. ‘Believe me, it is not a topic I would be flippant about.’

‘But—he—I mean—why?’

Theo’s mouth curved into a grim travesty of a smile that had no trace of humour at all in it.

‘My father has always tried to run my life,’ he said at last. ‘When I was small he took control completely—I could barely breathe without his permission. My mother died when I was five—two years later I was sent to board-ing-school in England.’

‘At seven?’

She looked truly shocked, Theo reflected. Shocked, and something else he couldn’t quite interpret. If he’d been caught in a weak moment he might have called it sympathetic, but he would probably be fooling himself to even consider it.

‘I wasn’t the only one,’ he returned dryly. ‘I was in a class of boys that age. My father was determined that I should get the best education possible—for him that meant an English public school, then an English university. Then, of course, working with him in the Antonakos Corporation.’

‘He had your life all mapped out for you.’

Theo’s mouth twisted cynically.

‘Right down to the woman I should marry.’

Skye perched on the arm of one of the big chairs. Her eyes still had that strange shadowed look in them. Concentrate on that, he told himself fiercely. At least if he kept his gaze—and his attention—focused on her eyes, then he would stop himself from thinking too much about the rest of her.

About the slide of her hair over the bare, lightly tanned shoulder exposed by the slender straps of her lilac-coloured dress. About the way that sitting on the edge of the chair had pulled the already short skirt up even higher on the slim, elegant legs. About the sway of soft breasts clearly not confined in some restricting contraption of satin and Lycra, but moving with each slight gesture she made.

When she lifted a hand to push through her hair his blood pressure mounted to an alarming degree. And the memory of those legs wrapped around his waist like hot silk as she writhed underneath him threatened his ability to think so badly that he barely heard her next comment and had to force his attention back to the present before he lost track of things completely.

‘You didn’t like her?’

‘You really don’t know my father too well, do you? I never saw her—and neither, I believe, did he.’

There was no mistaking the emotion that widened her eyes now. It was total consternation—mixed with a touch of disbelief.

‘You’d never even met her?’

Theo shook his head firmly. ‘It was to be an arranged marriage. A cold-blooded financial arrangement between my father and hers.’

‘And you had no say in the matter?’

‘My father certainly didn’t intend that I should. I was twenty-seven—more than old enough to start providing him with grandchildren. He had surveyed all the families with daughters of marriageable age, and Agna’s father owned land he wanted. That, together with the fact that she was just nineteen, a virgin, and the family fortune, though no match for the Antonakos wealth, was far from inadequate, made her the perfect choice as far as he was concerned.’

‘So this Agna didn’t get a choice either?’

‘Why should she? She was only a daughter, and as far as two greedy old men were concerned she had one real purpose to serve—to marry well, improve the family fortunes, and bear an heir to the combined estate.’

‘Oh, don’t! You make her sound like a brood mare!’

Skye’s voice broke uncontrollably on the words as a result of the bleak thoughts that flooded her mind. At first she been feeling so uptight that she had almost let his explanation of the rift with his father slip by in a haze of shocked disbelief, without registering the impact it had on her personally. All she had thought of was the way Theo had been treated, when she should have looked at what it meant for her.

And what it meant for her was an added brutal twist to the knife in her heart, an added sense of being used.

She was only a daughter, and as far as two greedy old men were concerned she had one purpose to serve—to marry well, improve the family fortunes, and bear an heir to the combined estate.

The words seemed to gather an added sense of bitterness with each repetition inside her head. Theo’s father had not managed to get his way, by marrying his son off, so he had done the next best thing by taking a young wife who, in her own words, would have to act as ‘a brood mare’.

‘Not me, sweetheart,’ Theo returned harshly. ‘I was the one who turned her down, remember. I had no wish to get married. And I lost my own inheritance as a result.’

‘He really disinherited you? Cut you out of his will without a penny?’

‘That is what the term usually means. Though that “without a penny” isn’t strictly accurate. I’d already formed my own company—one with an income my father couldn’t touch. No, the part of my inheritance I really lost was this island.’

‘Helikos?’

The grim set to Theo’s mouth as he nodded twisted her nerves into even more painful knots.

‘It was my mother’s and it should have come to me. But anything else—forget it! In the five years since I rebelled against the idea of becoming a married man, I’ve more than doubled my profits. I expect my personal fortune will match my father’s now. So you needn’t worry that I lost out on the deal.’

‘I never…’ Skye began, but she was interrupted by the sound of the telephone shrilling through the room. She glanced in the direction of the sound, but it was more important that Theo should know she hadn’t been shocked at his father’s treatment of him because of the money he had lost.

‘That wasn’t what was on my mind!’ she continued. ‘I—’

Once more the sound of the phone cut into her words.

‘Aren’t you going to answer that?’ Theo asked.

‘I’m not sure I should. Your father…’

Cyril had made it plain that she was not to interfere in his life. That she was only to be a decorative wife on his arm and in his bed.

‘It will probably be him anyway. And if it isn’t—well, the reason you’re here is that you will be Kyria Antonakos in a matter of weeks. So if you’re determined to go through with it, you’d better get a taste for acting as the mistress of the house.’

He made a point of walking away to the open doors again, giving her time and privacy for the call.

It was Cyril and what he had to say, the tone he used, made icy footsteps dance up and down her spine. He had never, obviously, treated her with much affection, but now his tone was positively brusque, his need to get away quickly desperately worrying.

Skye was suddenly a prey to a terrible fear that something had gone wrong. Had something happened to make Cyril change his mind so that even the sacrifice she was prepared to make wasn’t enough? The thought made her realise just how terribly isolated she was, how alone. But with Theo so close at hand she didn’t dare to ask, and Cyril issued his last order and switched off the phone even as she was struggling to find a reply.

When Theo swung round again to face her she was still standing by the table, sharp teeth digging into her lower lip, a frown of concern between her brows.

‘Theo will look after you,’ Cyril had said, and right at this moment she couldn’t even begin to think which was worse—this terrible, dragging sense of loneliness and fear, or the thought of being alone with Theo once more.

‘He’s staying in Athens tonight,’ she said flatly when she saw that Theo was looking at her. ‘Not coming back till tomorrow. He—he said you’d look after me.’

She lifted her eyes as she spoke, her dove-grey gaze locking with his, and Theo wondered sharply just what was going through her mind.

He knew what was going through his.

His father was not coming back until tomorrow. Twenty-four hours alone with Skye.

Twenty-four hours alone with temptation. A night of temptation.

He said you’d look after me.

Oh, Theos! His father had no suspicion at all just how he would like to look after this woman, or he wouldn’t have left her in his care.

He had already been fighting himself desperately for more than forty-eight hours. Could he manage to keep his feelings on a tight rein for another day, here, on his own in the house with her?

It was not something he wanted to risk.

‘I have things I need to do.’

‘All right.’

She wouldn’t look at him as she spoke, but seemed absorbed in a painting that hung on the far wall, concentrating fiercely on the image of Persephone.

‘You’ll be all right?’

‘I’ll be fine.’

It was less certain this time, the words faintly uneven. But she still wouldn’t look at him.

Was there a thickness in her voice? And the only time he had ever seen anyone blink that hard it had been because they were blinking back…

‘Skye?’

Perversely, now that he had what he wanted, Theo found he was more than reluctant to leave. A faint flicker of a smile touched Skye’s mouth as she watched him hesitate. But it was a cynical, disturbingly weary smile. And at last she looked at him, or at least she turned her head in his direction, but her unfocused gaze seemed to go straight over his shoulder, avoiding his eyes.

‘What are you trying to do?’ she questioned with a rough-edged note to the words, as if her words were unravelling as she spoke. ‘Do you want to prove that I can’t let you go? That that…electricity that you think is between us will make it impossible to part from you?’

‘I’d be a fool to think that,’ he said with dark softness, ‘when I know only too well that you could walk out without a second thought. You’ve already done it once.’

‘I told you it was just for that night.’

‘And I told you I don’t do one-night stands.’

This time when she blinked her gaze seemed to come back into focus and her dark, cloudy eyes met his just once, then flinched away again.

‘Are you claiming you wanted more?’

‘It was certainly an experience that I would have liked to repeat if you hadn’t bolted out of there like a frightened rabbit before I even had time to wake up.’

‘I did not bolt!’

‘You sure as hell didn’t hang around. What was it, sweet Skye? A sudden realisation that you had a conscience after all?’

‘It wasn’t that at all.’

Skye aimed for defiance, almost made it, but her voice slipped a little on the last couple of words. But she felt as if she were fighting for her life here and she had no intention of letting him see it.

The acid burn of misery ate into her soul at the memory of the way she had felt when she had left that hotel room. At the time she had thought that nothing could make her feel worse. Now she knew how wrong she had been.

‘I said at the time that it was my way or nothing. And you agreed.’

‘I went along with what you said,’ Theo corrected coldly. ‘I don’t recall signing any agreement in blood. I was fool enough to think you might wait around at least for breakfast.’

‘I told you how it would be. Why should you complain when I stuck to my word?’

‘I didn’t like the way it made me feel.’

‘And that was?’

‘Used.’

It was the last thing she had expected and the single word made her thoughts reel in shock.

Used.

He had felt used?

How did he think his father had made her feel?

‘Join the club!’ she flashed back, her spinning brain unable to think of anything less provocative in the few seconds that were at her disposal.

‘What?’

For a moment she thought that once more Theo’s grasp of English had failed him and that was why he was frowning his lack of comprehension. But the next second she realised how dangerously close she had come to giving away the true details of her situation.

‘Well, you have to admit it’s unusual for a man to feel that way…’ She covered her tracks hastily. ‘That’s how most women feel when a man only wants a one-night stand. It doesn’t do any harm for you to get a taste of your own medicine.’

‘I did not use you!’

‘We both used each other. It was just—what was it you said? A night of meaningless passion.’

‘Meaningless is the truth. You couldn’t get out of there quick enough!’

Oh, if only he knew the reality of it!

Skye felt tears threaten and fought against them hard, tightening her jaw and clamping her mouth tight shut against the little cry of distress that almost escaped her.

If only he knew how she had felt that morning when she had woken to find herself curled up close to his long, warm body, clasped tight in the strength of his arms.

For a few, wonderful moments reality hadn’t quite sunk in and she had lain there, keeping her eyes closed, a small, ridiculous smile on her face, just enjoying the sensation of being held like this. How she had wished that she could just stay there, held close, and never, ever move again.

And when she had finally left the room, her face had been streaked with tears. Tears of loss for a man who hadn’t even known who she was and—if fate was kind—would never know.

But of course fate had not been kind. The truth was that fate had been at its cruellest that night, and again when it had brought her here, to this island just three days ago.

Because it had brought her face to face with the man who had stolen part of her soul on that single night in a London hotel. The man whom she had tried to convince herself she never wanted to meet ever again. But the man whom she knew, deep down in her heart, she most longed to see in the entire world.

Until he had appeared in Helikos in the form of the one man that she must never, ever, even dream of getting close to. The man who was totally forbidden to her, and had to stay that way for the rest of her life.




CHAPTER TEN


‘I’M SORRY.’

Skye felt obliged to say it.

‘I never meant you to feel used.’

The truth was that it was the last thing she had expected.

‘But can’t we forget about that night—put it behind us?’

‘You know damn well that we can’t!’

Theo’s voice was rough and husky and his eyes burned like polished jet as they scoured her face.

‘It’s still there—between us. I can’t forget about it—can you?’

Never in her life, Skye acknowledged, but she was going to have to try. There was no way she and her family could have a future if she didn’t escape from the past.

‘I have to,’ she said with what she hoped sounded like conviction. ‘We have to. Nothing can happen between us. I’m marrying your father. We have to live as if we’d never met before. As if we’d never…’

‘And you can do that, can you?’ Theo put in when her voice failed her, lacking the courage to complete the sentence. His tone was dark with cynical scepticism, making his disbelief all too plain. ‘You can pretend that we were never lovers—that we have only ever been stepmother and stepson?’

No! No, I can’t do it—I can’t bear it! Skye’s heart felt as if it were being ripped in two at just the thought. She didn’t want to be Theo’s stepmother. She didn’t feel at all motherly towards him. She wanted…

But she couldn’t have what she wanted. That was forbidden to her. She had to put even the dream of it out of her mind and learn, somehow, to live with what was real.

She found the strength to straighten her back, lift her head. She even managed to look him straight in the face, meeting the black-ice stare of those coldly assessing eyes.

‘Yes,’ she managed, and was stunned to hear an assurance that she could never have felt actually sounding in her voice.

But was it enough to convince Theo? He had to be convinced. She didn’t know how she could go on if he wasn’t.

He didn’t look convinced. But then she didn’t know what he did look. She couldn’t read his still, inscrutable expression. Couldn’t tell a single thought that was passing through his coolly assessing brain. She could only hope and pray.

Still with his eyes fixed on her face, Theo stirred slightly. He drew in a long, thoughtful breath, inclined his head to one side, ever so slightly.

‘Prove it,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Prove it,’ Theo repeated, with a harder, slashing emphasis. ‘If you’re so convinced that you can act as if we’ve never been lovers—as if there is nothing between us—then do it. And get some practice in before my father comes home. He said I would look after you; I think I’d better start doing that.’

‘But…’ Skye tried to protest, but Theo cut through her stumbling attempt to speak.

‘Spend the rest of the day with me. We’ll do a guided tour of the island—that seems like the sort of thing a good stepson would do. Be my stepmother—nothing more. And if at the end of the day you can still say you can live with things that way, then I swear I’ll leave you alone—for good.’

I’ll leave you alone—for good.

Skye’s mind swung violently between hope and despair; agreement and total, desolate rejection of his suggestion. One part of her wanted to do this so that he would leave her in peace—and yet the thing she most wanted in all the world was that he would never leave her. But the way she wanted that was what was totally forbidden to her.

She was going to have to learn to live with that. And perhaps the way that Theo had suggested—the idea of practising, of trying to get used to the idea, without the fear of having Cyril’s eyes following every move—might just work.

She didn’t know. But the one thing she was sure of was that the ruthless, determined set of Theo’s hard features made it only too plain that if she refused then he would put his own interpretation on that fact. An interpretation that spelt death to her hopes of any peace of mind in the future.

It seemed to her that she had only one possible choice.

‘All right,’ she said slowly. ‘I’ll do it.’

Was he really going through with this? Theo asked himself when they were in the car and heading down the rough, winding road that led away from the house. What had happened to his doubts, to the private acknowledgement of the risks he ran, the temptation he would have to endure if he stayed?

The truth was that he wanted that temptation. He couldn’t turn away and just leave it. When he was with Skye he felt more involved with everything, more alive than ever before, and he wasn’t going to abandon a chance to experience that sensation once more, even if it was for the last time.

Besides, he hadn’t been back to Helikos in all the five years he had been apart from his father. He wanted to reacquaint himself with the place, revisit his favourite spots, the places he had loved as a boy. And he would enjoy seeing them afresh through her eyes.

‘We’ll follow the coast road first,’ he told her. ‘That way we can visit the ruined monastery and take a look at some of the caves before we head for the village. I know a wonderful little taverna where we can eat dinner. The people who own it were like family to me.’

And almost more than family, he recalled. Berenice, the oldest daughter, a woman not much more than five years older than himself, had had an intense affair with his father at about the time that the old man had tried to push his son into an unwanted marriage. He remembered how, in one of the last conversations he had had with Cyril, he had flung the fact into the older man’s face.

‘If you’re so desperate to have more heirs,’ he had shouted, ‘then why don’t you marry your mistress? Start a new family with her!’

‘I might just do that!’ Cyril had responded.

But it seemed that now Berenice was out of the picture. Obviously, his father had thought twice about making a simple village woman the fifth Mrs Antonakos.

Instead he had chosen this English girl who was less than half his age. A girl who was not at all the type his father usually went for.

Berenice was much more his father’s type. Cyril Antonakos was drawn to that small, black-haired, dark-eyed, full-bosomed type of woman. Not the tall, slim, Titianhaired seductress that Skye Marston was.

A woman who, simply by existing, made Theo live in a state of constant hunger, of a desire so hot and painful that it was an agony of frustration to sit so close to her in the confined space of the car. An agony of yearning to inhale the delicate fragrance of her skin with every breath he took, and not do anything about it.

A woman who made him want to slam on the brakes, bring the car to a screeching halt and turn in his seat, reaching out for her in desperation. Made him want to drag her into his arms, haul her close and take her mouth, kissing her hard and long, demandingly, until they were both senseless with heady desire, an explosive cocktail of hunger and frantic passion impossible to control.

‘Theos…’ Cursing under his breath, Theo gripped the steering wheel so tightly that the knuckles on his hands showed white under the tanned skin. Pebbles flew up from underneath the tyres, clanging against the underside of the car and making Skye look up in stunned confusion.

‘Is there a problem?’

‘I forgot how primitive the island roads can be. You can’t afford to let your concentration slip for a moment.’

‘The view has much the same effect,’ she smiled. ‘I never knew the sea could be so many wonderful shades of blue.’

If she smiled at him like that once more, then he was lost. Theo forced his attention back to the road

‘This is October. You should see it in the summer—it’s like the most brilliant jewel in all the world then.’

‘I’d love to see it.’

Skye’s voice had an odd little break in it, one that made it sound suddenly vulnerable and dangerously appealing so that Theo had to clench his jaw tight against the way that that softness twisted in his guts.

‘You will do,’ he said, the fight he was having with himself making his words come out far more harshly than he wanted. ‘You’ll be living here then—as my stepmama.’

If he had reached out and slapped her hard across the face, it couldn’t have had a more dramatic effect on her. She shrank back inside herself like a small, frightened rabbit retreating into the protection of its burrow. The sudden clouding of her eyes and the way that her sharp white teeth dug into the softness of her mouth were like a reproach to him, making him curse himself for the roughness of his reply.

But at least she had lost that tempting smile. And the way that she turned from him, fixing her concentration back onto the azure spread of the ocean at the bottom of the dramatic fall of the cliffs, meant that temptation no longer tormented him with thoughts of the softness of her breasts beneath the lilac dress, the shortness of her skirt.

If she kept her back turned to him, her gaze on the view before her, then he might just be able to keep a grip on the hunger; stop it from running away with the last bit of sense he possessed.

If she kept her back turned to him, her gaze on the view before her, then she might just be able to keep a grip on her emotions, Skye told herself. She had made a near fatal mistake in turning, in smiling at him, as she had.

Turning had brought her too close to him. It had made her so intensely aware of his physical presence beside her. She had inhaled the scent of his body with her swiftly indrawn breath, and her smile had been directed straight into those watchful black eyes. And she was sure there had been some flicker of response in them that had had her holding her breath in disbelief.

But then suddenly he had changed. She had seen it in his face, heard it in the tone of his voice as he had drawled cruelly, ‘You’ll be living here then—as my stepmama.’

Did he know how much it hurt to be slapped in the face by that reminder? He had to. It was why he had done it. He was making sure that she remembered exactly where she would stand with him if she went through with the marriage to his father.

A marriage she had to go through with if she was to have any chance of ensuring her parents’ future.

And any chance of saving her mother’s life. The memory of the phone call she had had with her father last night invaded her head, dragging dark shadows with it. She had wanted to speak to her mother, but Claire Marston had been sleeping. They weren’t prepared to wake her…

A tiny gasping sob escaped her, impossible to hold back. She had been a fool to think that she could ever go through with this stepmother act.

‘What’s wrong?’

The hard demand sliced through the atmosphere inside the car like a slashing knife, making her jump with the force of it.

‘Nothing.’

Her heart lurched painfully as she heard his muttered curse and felt the car come to an abrupt halt, spraying pebbles wildly around the tyres.

‘Something has upset you and I want to know what.’

‘Do you really have to ask?’ Skye twisted in her seat, turning back to face him, blinking ferociously to drive away the weak and revealing tears in her eyes.

‘I mean—I’m sure you know only too well. Or can guess. Why are you so determined that I shouldn’t marry your father?’ she demanded when she saw his dark frown of incomprehension. ‘Why does it matter so much to you?’

‘Because you would be living a lie—we both would.’

‘We had one night together! It doesn’t have to affect the rest of our lives.’

‘One night I can’t forget. And I don’t believe you can either.’

There was no hint of yielding in his face. His features were set in hard, ruthless lines, his eyes glittering with the coldest anger.

‘You were a virgin—you know what they say about always remembering your first.’

That burned so much into her already wounded soul that Skye closed her eyes briefly against the pain. But then she immediately forced them open again, dragging herself back into the role of careless indifference she had chosen for her own protection.

‘Well, don’t flatter yourself that that’s true for me. You might want to imagine that you were unforgettable, but I’m afraid that’s just not the case.’

Not true, her outraged conscience reproached her, crying out against the betrayal of the truth. She hadn’t forgotten Theo’s touch, his kisses, his lovemaking. The vivid intensity of her memories, the blazing Technicolor brilliance of her dreams, left her in no doubt at all that the images would never fade.

She’d insulted him savagely too. She could see it in the flaring rage in the black brilliance of his eyes, the tightness of every muscle in his face that scored white lines of fury around his nose and mouth, stretched the skin ferociously over the broad cheekbones. It hurt to see what she had done, and she longed to open her mouth and protest sharply, to take back the terrible words. But even as her conscience lashed at her for the lies, her sense of self-protection recognised the need for it; the shield she had put up against the dangers of letting this man get too close.

But he was already too close, she admitted miserably. He was in her mind all day, every day. In her dreams each night.

In her heart.

But no! She wouldn’t allow herself to let that idea into her head. She couldn’t risk it, didn’t dare to even consider the possibility that she had come to care for Theo Antonakos more than was safe.

‘Is that why you bolted? Because I was so forgettable?’

He was starting the car again as he spoke. Starting it with a roar and a crunch of gears that, even after such a short acquaintance with his driving techniques, she knew was completely non-typical of him.

He was beyond angry. He was furious—coldly furious. But while she shivered inside at the thought of his rage, she also welcomed it. His loss of temper had distracted him, taken him away from the thought of probing into why she had been so upset. It had stopped him from asking any more questions that she would find impossible to answer and so, while she couldn’t relax, she could at least feel that she only had one thing to concentrate on. Theo’s obvious dislike of and contempt for the woman she was pretending to be, the mask she was hiding behind, was hard enough to cope with. But at least it kept him from digging any deeper into areas that she couldn’t even begin to explain.

‘Or was it that you were shocked rigid at the discovery of your own sensuality and you were running scared?’

‘I wasn’t scared! What is there to be scared of?’

‘What?’

Once more the car screeched to a halt on the deserted road. Theo had barely had time to yank on the brake before he had flung off his seat belt and was turning towards her, grabbing hold of her arms and pulling her towards him with a force that made her own seat belt lock, holding her immobile.

Cursing savagely, he stabbed a long finger on the button that released the strap, catching her as she tumbled into his arms.

‘What is there to be scared of? I’ll show you…’

Arms like steels bands fastened around her, twisting her in her seat as he hauled her up against him. His mouth came down on hers with a savage demand, crushing her lips cruelly and forcing them open under the pressure of his.

But then, in the space of a single, jerking heartbeat, everything changed. Her mouth wasn’t crushed open, but yielding swiftly and softly, letting him in rather than having no option. The taste of him was as intoxicating as fine wine, rushing straight to her head, coiling along her senses so that she couldn’t get enough of him. Her tongue tangled with his, taking in more of him, inviting, offering more of herself. And he took it. He took her mouth, he took her senses, he took her hunger and fed it, making it grow and rage out of control.




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