Marriage At His Convenience

She would listen, agree and get out fast.

“It’s quite simple,” Lucas murmured. He hauled her hard against him, his dark head swooped down and his mouth closed over hers. Amber gasped and her briefcase fell from her hand and clattered to the floor.

“You haven’t changed,” he said huskily. “Still the sexiest girl alive.”

“Let me go,” she demanded bitterly as she headed for the door.

Lucas smiled, catching her wrist and spinning her back to face him. “The solution is simple—I marry you,” he declared, a hint of satisfaction in his voice. “You did ask me once before, remember?”

Amber would have given everything she owned not to. “Over my dead body. Your arrogance is only exceeded by your colossal conceit in daring to ask the question.”

“I did not ask a question.” His eyes glinted mockingly. “I made a statement of intent.”

Marriage at His Convenience

Jacqueline Baird

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

LUCAS KARADINES stood before the plate-glass window of his New York office, his dark eyes staring out over the Manhattan skyline without really registering the landscape. He ran a long-fingered hand through his night-black hair, a predatory smile curving his sensuous mouth, and a hint of triumph glittered in his eyes. Lunch had been a resounding success; he had done it! Tomorrow afternoon at Karadines London hotel, he and his father Theo, and the head of the Aristides Corporation, Alex Aristides, would sign the deal that would make Karadines one of the largest international hotel chains, and shipping lines in the world.

Like his own father, Alex Aristides was not in the best of health, but unlike his father he had no son to carry on the family business, one of the oldest firms in Greece, hence the sale to Karadines at a discounted price. Tomorrow night a party would be held for the families, the lawyers, and a few friends to celebrate the deal.

Lucas turned back to his desk, his glance falling on the telephone; as for the rest, a brief frown marred the perfect symmetry of his strikingly handsome face. It was time he made the call. He glanced at the gold Rolex on his wrist—at a pinch he could make it back to London tonight. Amber would not mind him arriving in the middle of the night… Amber was a born sensualist—he had never known a sexier woman. Amber with the long golden brown hair, and the long legs; legs that entwined with his as though they were made to match. He felt the familiar stirring in his loins and for a moment felt a flicker of regret.

No, he ruthlessly squashed the wayward thought. There was more to life than wild, white-hot sex. And he hadn’t forgotten he’d had to wait a long time for even that the last time he had returned to London a day early. Amber had been at work and when she’d finally returned to the apartment, had only been able to spare half an hour as she’d had a business dinner to attend. They had made up for it later, but Lucas Karadines was not the kind of man to wait around for any woman, or play second fiddle to a woman’s career. Several times he had suggested she resign from her job and allow him to keep her, but she had refused.

No, his mind was made up. In fact his decision had been made weeks ago. Lucas had been in the first stages of delicate negotiations to try and buy out the Aristides Corporation when he’d been introduced to the daughter of the owner, and fate had played a hand. Christina, sweet, innocent Christina, was everything he wanted in a wife. She was the opposite of Amber. She had absolutely no desire for a career other than marriage and children. She was Greek with the same cultural background and traditions as himself. And Christina adored him and hung onto his every word. They were totally compatible, and she would make a brilliant wife and mother.

The timing was perfect. After his father’s last Angina attack he had confided in Lucas his ambition to see him happily married with a family of his own before he died. Lucas needed no urging to propose to Christina; he was ready to settle down and raise a family. His father was delighted at the deal and the prospect of Lucas marrying was icing on the cake.

Lucas knew he owed everything to his father. He had rescued him at the age of thirteen from the streets of Athens. His mother had left a letter with the Karadineses’ lawyers before she died, giving proof that Lucas was the illegitimate son of Theo Karadines. His father had searched for him, found him and taken him into his home, paid for his education, given him his name and moulded him in his own image, for which Lucas was eternally grateful. Lucas’s much older half-brother had been killed with his wife in a plane crash when Lucas was twenty-six. Without hesitation his father had made Lucas head of the company and he had repaid him by expanding and increasing their holdings and profits a hundredfold.

He turned, strode to his desk, and picked up the telephone, one long finger jabbing out the number he knew by heart. He straightened his broad shoulders beneath the exquisitely tailored dark blue silk jacket, and shoved his free hand in the pocket of his trousers, and with a look of grim determination on his face he listened to the ringing tone.

Amber Jackson walked back into her office with a dazed look in her lovely eyes and a broad grin on her face. She’d just had lunch with Sir David Janson, the chairman of the merchant bank by the same name, and she was still in a state of shock at what he had revealed to her. The ringing of the telephone brought her back to reality with a jolt. It might be Lucas, and, dashing across to her desk, she picked up the receiver.

‘Amber, good I caught you. I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to see you tomorrow. It will be Saturday before we can meet, pressure of business, you understand.’

The happy expression that had illuminated Amber’s face when she’d picked up the receiver and heard the deep rich tones of her boyfriend’s voice turned into a disappointed frown.

‘Yes, I understand.’ What else could she say? Lucas was the managing director of his family firm, a large hotel and leisure company, and he spent much of his time travelling between the main offices in Athens and New York, and the various holdings around the world. In the year she had known him, she had accepted the fact he could not be with her all the time. She had a high-powered job herself as a dealer with Brentford’s, a large stockbroking firm, and she knew all too well the pressure of work. ‘But I’m not very happy,’ she added huskily. The sound of his voice alone was enough to make her pulse race, and she was missing him quite madly. ‘It is almost two months since I saw you. I was really looking forward to tomorrow—it is the anniversary of our first date and I have some marvellous news for you. You won’t believe it.’

‘I have some news for you as well,’ he drawled, and the trace of sarcasm in his tone wasn’t very reassuring. ‘But it will keep until Saturday.’

It was not the response she would have liked, but then for the past few weeks Lucas’s telephone calls had been few and brief, and her confidence in his love had begun to waver a little. She told herself she was being stupid. He loved her, she knew he did. But she knew the last time he had come back unexpectedly early hoping to surprise her he had been chillingly angry because she had refused to leave her office the moment he’d called and she’d insisted on keeping her work commitments. Later that night he had suggested yet again she give up her job, declaring a man of his wealth did not need a girlfriend who worked. Amber had tried to make a joke out of it, by answering with, ‘I will when I am married and pregnant, but not before,’ hoping he would take the hint and ask her to marry him. He hadn’t. But when Amber had had to go back to work on the Monday he had casually informed her he had to go to New York for a while. The while had stretched into two long months.

Amber was desperate to see him again. She had taken tomorrow, Friday, off work especially to be able to meet him. Now he was saying Saturday, and she could have wept with frustration. But she wanted nothing to upset their reunion, and so she responded with determined good humour.

‘Okay, but I miss you. It has been so long and I’m suffering from terrible withdrawal symptoms. I expect you to cure me on sight,’ she said throatily.

‘Sorry, darling, but it is only one more day—but it might be more if I don’t get off this line and back to work.’

The prospect of their reunion being delayed even further was enough for Amber to end the conversation within a minute. She replaced the receiver, her smile somewhat restored at his use of the endearment and his apology for the delay. She had waited so long, she could easily wait another day.

But on leaving the classic old building that housed the prestigious offices of the Brentford brokerage firm, she could not help a pensive sigh escaping. She thought her surprise was special, but would Lucas? Lucas had come into her life like a whirlwind and she’d changed from a serious young woman of twenty-two, who had never worn a designer dress in her life, into the sophisticated, elegant creature she was today. But sometimes when she looked in the mirror she did not recognise herself…

Securing the gaily wrapped parcel she was carrying more firmly under one arm, Amber waved down a passing cab by swinging her briefcase in her other hand. She was completely oblivious to the admiring glances of the dozens of men pouring out of the city office. At five-feet-seven, with a slender but curvaceous body clad in a smart navy suit, the short skirt ending inches above her knees, and the snug-fitting jacket enhancing her tiny waist and the soft swell of her breasts, she was an enchanting picture. She moved with a natural, sensuous grace. Her long light brown hair, gleaming like the colour of polished chestnuts, fell from a centre parting, and was loosely tied at her nape with a pearl clasp, before falling like a silken banner almost to her waist. Her face was a classic oval with high cheekbones, a small straight nose and a wide, full-lipped mouth, but it was her huge eyes, hazel in colour and tinged with gold, shining beneath extravagantly long lashes, that animated her whole face.

‘Where to, miss?’ The cab stopped at her feet, and with a bright smile she slid into the back seat and gave the driver the address of her friends Tim and Spiro.

She alighted from the taxi outside the door of a small terraced house in Pimlico, and, after paying the fare, she glanced up at the white-painted house. It was hard to believe it was five years ago since she had moved into the house with Tim, a lifelong friend from the small Northumbrian village of Thropton where they’d both been born and brought up. Tim had comforted her when her mother had died when she was seventeen, and he had been in his first year at art college when Amber had been about to start at the London School of Economics. It had been Tim’s suggestion she move into the spare room where he stayed. The house actually belonged to Spiro Karadines, a Greek student who was studying English at a language school before going to work at the deluxe London hotel which his family owned to learn the business from the bottom up. He reckoned he needed to let the rooms to students to pay for the upkeep of the house, because his closest relative was an uncle, Lucas Karadines, who controlled his trust fund, and was as mean as sin.

Lucas would not be pleased if he knew Amber was visiting his nephew Spiro, but he had been a good friend to her whatever Lucas thought about him. She rang the bell and waited, a reminiscent smile on her face. It was exactly a year ago tonight, Spiro’s twenty-second birthday, when she had first set eyes on Lucas. He had arrived unannounced at the party, and, after a furious argument with Spiro, Lucas had calmed down and accepted a drink.

For Amber it had been love at first sight. She had taken one look at the tall, dark-haired man, incongruously dressed in a house full of motley-clad students in an immaculate grey business suit, and at least a decade older than anyone else, and her heart had turned over. She’d been unable to take her eyes off him; her fascinated gaze had followed him around the room.

Well over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, and long-legged, with thick black hair slightly longer than the present fashion, he’d been the most handsome man she had ever seen. Even when it had been obvious he’d been hopelessly out of place in a room where quite a few of the men had been openly gay, he’d exuded a powerful sexuality that had been totally, tauntingly masculine. When his dark eyes had finally rested on her, he’d smiled and she’d blushed scarlet, and when he had casually asked her to have dinner with him the next night she had agreed with alacrity.

Spiro had tried to put her off. He had told her his uncle was a predator of the first order, a shark, who would gobble up a little girl like her for breakfast. He was thirty-five, far too old for her. He liked his women smart and sophisticated—women who knew the score. Amber had replied she was smart, and Spiro had laughed.

‘In the brains department, yes, but you dress like—a blue stocking, I believe is your peculiar English term.’

Amber had thumped him, but had ignored Spiro’s warning and gone out to dinner with Lucas anyway.

It had been a magical evening. Lucas had asked her all about herself, and she’d responded by telling him her ambition to be a successful investment analyst. How she had just completed her first year at work and was delighted to have earned a huge bonus. She’d even told him she was the only child of an unmarried mother, but he had not been shocked. Finally, when Lucas had seen her to her door he had asked her if she would like to accompany Spiro and Tim to the family villa on the Karadineses’ private island of the same name in the Aegean Sea for Easter. Amber had again accepted his invitation. The kiss-on-the-cheek goodnight had been a bit of a let-down. But after questioning Spiro the next day about Lucas, she had blown a few thousand pounds of her first year’s bonus in buying a wardrobe full of designer clothes, visiting a beautician, and transforming herself into the sophisticated kind of woman she thought Lucas liked.

By the end of the island holiday, she had met the senior Mr Karadines, and Lucas had no longer been seeing her as a student friend of Spiro, but had been looking at her with blatant male sexual speculation in his dark eyes. On returning to London he had called her and wined and dined her half a dozen times, but the relationship had not developed past a goodnight kiss, admittedly each one more passionate and lingering than the last, but nothing more. Then he had gone to New York on business and she had thought he had forgotten her. Two weeks later he’d been back, and the next dinner date they’d shared she’d ended up in his hotel suite and they’d become lovers.

He was her first and only lover so she had no one to compare him with, but she did not need to. She knew she had found her soul mate. He only had to look at her and her stomach curled, and when he touched her he ignited a fire, a passion she had never known existed. She had a vivid mental image of his magnificent naked body looming over her, his powerful shoulders and hair-roughened chest, the long, tanned length of him, all straining muscle and sinew as he kissed and caressed her, and taught her the exquisite delight only two people who loved could share. Within a week, at Lucas’s insistence, she had moved into the loft apartment he had bought overlooking the Thames, and their relationship had gone from strength to strength. Just thinking about him made her heart pound, and brought a dreamy smile to her face.

‘What are you looking so happy about?’ Tim’s demand brought her out of her reverie.

She looked into the sparkling blue eyes of the blond-haired man holding open the door. ‘Happy memories,’ she said, and, walking past him, she brushed her lips against his smooth cheek. ‘Where is the birthday boy? I have a present for him.’

With the ease of long familiarity Amber strolled into the small living room. ‘Happy birthday, Spiro.’ She grinned at the slender dark-haired man elegantly reclining on a deep blue satin brocade sofa, and, gently dropping the parcel she was carrying onto his lap, she kicked off her shoes and sat down on the matching sofa opposite.

‘My, I am honoured. My esteemed uncle has actually allowed you to visit us. It must be over six months since we saw you,’ and, lifting an enquiring eyebrow to his partner, he added, ‘or is it more, Tim?’

‘Cut the sarcasm, Spiro. Amber is our friend, even if we do abhor her taste in men. Open your gift.’

‘Yes, Spiro, where Lucas is concerned we’ve agreed to differ. So open the present—I’ll have you know I went to great trouble to find just the right gift,’ Amber declared with a grin.

‘So-rry, Amber,’ he drawled dramatically. ‘You’ve caught me in a bad mood; I am finally beginning to feel my age.’

‘At twenty-three!’ she exclaimed. ‘Don’t make me laugh.’

‘You deserve to laugh, Amber. You deserve to be happy,’ Spiro suddenly said seriously.

‘I am happy.’ She grinned back. ‘Now open the parcel.’

Two minutes later Spiro was on his feet and pressing a swift kiss on Amber’s cheek. ‘I love it, Amber,’ he said, his gaze straying back to the small sketch of two young men, clad in loincloths, facing up as if to wrestle. ‘But it must have cost you a fortune—it is an original from the nineteenth century, isn’t it?’

‘Of course, I would not dare give you a fake,’ she replied, and all three laughed. Amber knew Spiro hated working for the family firm and his burning ambition was to set up his own art gallery.

Unfortunately she also knew Lucas controlled the purse strings, and Spiro could not inherit his late father’s share of the firm until he was twenty-five, or married. Spiro had a very generous monthly allowance, but he spent every penny.

The week after she’d moved in with Lucas, she had tried to put Spiro’s point of view to Lucas but he had withdrawn behind a cold, impenetrable mask and told her curtly to keep out of their family business, and also suggested she keep away from his nephew.

The ease with which he had turned into a hard, remote stranger as though her thoughts and opinions were nothing had scared her. Amber had wanted to argue, she’d tried, but Lucas had simply blanked her. Unfortunately it had put a strain on Amber’s friendship with her former flat-mates. She did keep in touch with Tim on a regular basis—they talked on the phone every week or so—but Spiro was right. It was months since she had seen them both.

‘I bet my uncle does not know you spent a fortune on this for me?’ Spiro said, propping the framed sketch on the cast-iron mantelpiece, before turning back to look down on Amber.

‘It has nothing to do with Lucas. I found out two weeks ago my bonus at the end of this financial year, on the fifth of April, is—wait for it, boys,’ and with a wide grin, she said, ‘almost a quarter of a million.’

‘Well done, Amber, love,’ Tim exclaimed. ‘I always knew you were a genius.’

‘This calls for a double celebration! Break out the bubbly, Tim, and let the party start,’ Spiro added his congratulations. ‘The three musketeers are back in action.’

Moisture glazed Amber’s eyes at Spiro’s reminder of what the three of them used to be nicknamed by their friends when they had all lived together. She’d changed and moved on, and the carefree days were long gone, but not forgotten.

The champagne was produced and toasts drank to Spiro, to Amber, to Tim, to life, and anything else they could think of. It was like old times.

Two hours later, her jacket long since removed and the clip taken from her hair, Amber was curled up on the sofa with a glass of champagne in her hand when Spiro dropped a bomb on the proceedings.

‘So, Amber, what do you think of this idea of Lucas’s to get married? I saw Grandfather yesterday—he is staying at the hotel while having a check-up at his Harley Street doctor, and he is delighted at the news.’

Suddenly the world seemed a wonderful place to Amber, even in her half-inebriated state. ‘He told you that? Lucas is thinking of getting married! I can’t believe it!’ she cried happily. Lucas had actually told his father they were getting married; she couldn’t wait for him to get home to ask her. Of course, she would have to pretend she didn’t know. ‘I spoke to Lucas this afternoon and I was disappointed because he can’t make it back from New York until Saturday.’ Her golden eyes sparkled like jewels in her flushed face. ‘But he did say he had some news for me, and I never guessed.’ Her not-so-subtle hint about giving up work when she was married and pregnant had obviously worked after all, she thought ecstatically.

‘According to Grandfather, Lucas has news for you, all right, but—’ Spiro started to speak but was cut off in mid-flow by Tim.

‘Shut up, Spiro. Amber does not need to know second hand.’

‘Please, Spiro, tell me what your grandfather said. I have only met him the one time we were all in Greece but I thought he liked me.’

A harsh laugh escaped Spiro. ‘Oh, he likes you, all right, but not for what you think.’

‘Spiro, no. It is none of your business,’ Tim interjected again. ‘We are having a good time—leave it.’

‘Why? Amber has been our friend for years—she deserves to know the truth. Do you really want her to find out cold?’

Lost in her dream of wedded bliss, she was only half listening but it slowly began to dawn on Amber that the two men were arguing. ‘What’s the matter?’ She glanced from one to the other. They looked serious. Straightening up in the seat, she drained her glass and placed it on the floor at her feet. ‘Come on, guys, find what out cold?’ she demanded cheerfully.

The two men looked at each other, and then Tim nodded. ‘You’re right, she deserves better.’

‘Better than what?’ Amber queried.

Spiro jumped to his feet. ‘Better than my bastard of an uncle.’

‘Oh, please, Spiro, not that again. Why can’t you just be happy that Lucas and I love each other? We accept you and Tim are partners, why can’t you return the favour and accept Lucas and I are partners just the same, instead of bleating on about him being a bastard?’

When she’d first told Tim and Spiro she was moving out to set up home with Lucas, Spiro had tried all ways to get her to change her mind. Finally, in a rage, he’d told her Lucas was the illegitimate child of his grandfather, and his mother was little better than a prostitute, notorious in Athens for her string of lovers, and Lucas was no better. Amber had refused to listen then and she refused to listen now. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, I never knew my father. So what does that make me?’

Spiro, his anger subsiding, looked at her with glistening brown eyes full of compassion. ‘I didn’t mean it literally, though that is true. I meant it figuratively, Amber. Lucas does not consider you his partner. He considers you his mistress, nothing more, and easily dispensable.’

‘Only married men have mistresses, Spiro,’ Amber snapped back. ‘You know nothing about my relationship with Lucas.’ Her face paled at Spiro’s hurtful comments. ‘And I think it’s time I left.’ Rising unsteadily to her feet, she glanced down at her old friends. Tim was watching her with compassion, and that hurt more than anything else did. Tim had known her since infant school, surely she should be able to count on his support? But apparently not.