Mediterranean Tycoons: Wealthy & Wicked

Yet seeing another man actually kiss Phoebe had stirred a primitive proprietorial instinct in him he had thought long gone. And she was wearing diamonds he had gifted her, which somehow offended him even more—though she had certainly earned them. He had never had such a sexually compatible bed partner before or since Phoebe, and the realisation dented his firm control.

‘I remember where I saw you, Phoebe.’ Jed was no longer amused, but angered by her denial of him, and dropped all pretence. ‘You were working as a receptionist in a hotel I stayed at once. You were a student at the time, I believe.’ Let her wriggle her way out of that one.

‘That’s possible, I suppose,’ she offered. ‘I did once work part-time in a hotel, but a lot of people pass through a hotel reception and I don’t remember all of them.’ Implying he was not memorable…

The elegant woman now standing before him was the opposite of the innocent wanton Jed remembered. The silver-grey silk gown clung to her every curve, and the high heels she wore added to her above average height. She looked at him with cool blue eyes and, knowing he had been insulted, he reluctantly had to admire her defiant response. He did not remember Phoebe being so feisty in the past.

‘Come on, Jed.’ Sophia grabbed his arm. ‘The band is playing our tune—let’s dance.’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said, glancing down at Sophia, his anger abating and his control restored. He realised a trifle ironically that Phoebe enraged him but the woman he intended asking to marry him did the opposite—she left him cold.

He led Sophia on to the dance floor and held her close. The music was slow, her head was resting on his chest and he was content to leave her that way. It avoided his having to talk and gave him time to think.

He never usually attended this kind of gathering, but as Sophia had asked him and she was the ambassador’s daughter he had agreed. They were staying at the embassy tonight, and he had decided it would be a good opportunity to do the conventional thing and ask her father for her hand in marriage before proposing.

Sophia was an attractive woman, well known for her voluntary work as a fundraiser for numerous charities in Athens. She was also a family friend and Greek, so she knew what was expected from a Greek wife, and if she was a bit stocky from the waist down he could live with that. She had good child-bearing hips—or so he had thought half an hour ago…

Sophia and her father had been opening the dancing, and he had stood at the top of the staircase, a glass of champagne in his hand. He had taken a sip and glanced idly around the room and stiffened, his dark eyes narrowing on the striking looking couple stopped in the middle of the dance floor.

The stem of the champagne glass had shattered in his fingers. But Jed had dismissed the hovering waiter’s concern, his eyes fixed on the couple. The man was tall and blond and the woman in his arms was Phoebe…There was no mistake. Her image was engraved in his mind for all time. Phoebe Brown…

Her fair hair was swept severely back from her face, revealing her exquisite features, her head was tilted back and she was smiling up at her companion. His intent gaze had followed the slender line of her throat down to the creamy curves of her breasts, the tantalising cleavage shown to advantage by the halter-style long dress she was wearing. He had shoved his hand into his pants pocket, surprised by the stirring of arousal he had felt looking at her. But then she had always had that affect on him, and seemingly nothing had changed…

He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. Her partner spun her around and Jed had noted her once shoulder-length hair was much longer, and cascaded in gleaming waves down her back to end a few inches short of her narrow waist. Then he’d recognised something.

The diamond clip in the shape of a butterfly holding the sides of her hair at the crown of her head was a present he had given her. At the beginning of their affair he had teased her about shoving her hair behind her ears and fastening it with a rubber band. It was the first piece of jewellery he had bought her, and she had taken it with all the rest when she had left the apartment.

He had told himself at the time they were gifts, little enough for what she had gone through, and dismissed her from his mind. So why now was he bothered at seeing her wearing his gift when she was with another man? They were close—it was obvious by their body language. Almost certainly lovers, maybe even man and wife.

For some reason he did not question too deeply why he wanted to know. Then he’d seen his soon-to-be fiancée and her father approach, and forced a smile to his lips. Feigning a mild interest in the tall blond man with a few judicious questions to the ambassador, he’d discovered a lot about him.

Apparently Julian Gladstone was a wealthy landowner, and a fast rising star in the Foreign Office, known for his brilliant linguistic skills. The ambassador knew little about Phoebe, but he’d offered to introduce Gladstone, saying Jed would like the man—everyone did…

Well, he had met him…and he didn’t. Jed’s lips formed a cynical twist. But he could see why Phoebe or any woman would…The younger man was the golden-haired Adonis-type, but the steel-grey eyes told him Gladstone was no push over. In other circumstances, he admitted wryly, he probably would have liked him!

‘Jed, the band has stopped playing.’ Sophia wriggled sensually against him and he felt nothing. ‘You were miles away.’ She pouted.

‘Lost in your embrace,’ he said smoothly, and with a hand at her back led her towards the group at the bar.

Sophia was not fooled, and in a sulk she made a beeline for Julian, fluttering her long lashes at him and suggesting they dance.

Jed’s lips twisted again. Whether Sophia was a natural flirt or trying to make him jealous, he didn’t care. Gladstone was too much of a gentleman to refuse her, and it gave Jed the opportunity to move in on Phoebe.

‘That leaves you and me, Phoebe.’ He saw the rejection in her brilliant blue eyes, followed by a stiffening of her spine and a determined tilt to her small chin. ‘Dance with me,’ he demanded, and wrapped his hand around her wrist before she could refuse him.

Phoebe had opened her mouth to say no, but the electric touch of Jed’s smooth palm against her skin made her catch her breath, and she was too late as his other hand slid around her waist and drew her against him and on to the dance floor.

The music was slow again…

She rested one hand on his broad shoulder, trying to keep some distance between them. Preferably the Arctic Ocean…

And why didn’t this damn band play anything but mood music? she wondered as he moved her to the romantic rhythm with consummate ease. But her real problem was he was moving other parts of her she had considered thoroughly immune to him for years.

Get a grip…Jed Sabbides is just a man, like any other, and not a very nice one at that, she told herself. All she had to do was dance with him. She didn’t have to speak to him. Turning her head slightly, she stared over his shoulder, but she could feel his dark eyes on her.

‘Not looking at me won’t make me go away, Phoebe.’ He chuckled—a deep, throaty sound. ‘So stop staring into space and tell me how you have been. Good, by the look of you. If anything, you are more beautiful than ever.’

She glanced up at him then. ‘Thank you, I am fine,’ she said, determined to be coolly polite. But it was difficult with Jed’s arms around her and his piercing dark eyes holding hers.

‘Then tell me why, given our past relationship, I get the feeling you wish you had never set eyes on me again. Even denying we had met?’ he asked, with a mocking smile.

‘Me?’ Phoebe raised a delicately shaped eyebrow. ‘I gave you the opportunity to acknowledge we knew each other when I said I was pleased to see you, instead of meet you. You didn’t take it, and I understood why. Obviously you did not want to upset Sophia. But what I don’t understand is why you started playing your stupid games. You should think yourself lucky I didn’t blurt out the truth,’ she said her blue eyes hard. ‘Your fiancée does not need to know what a louse you are.’ That knocked the smile off his face, she noted, and felt the sudden tension in his body.

‘Sophia is not my fiancée.’

‘Tell that to the ambassador, because I think he’s hoping she is going to be very soon.’

‘Sophia might have given him that impression,’ he said, without any inflection whatsoever, ‘but it is not necessarily true.’

‘Well, for what it is worth I think you make the perfect couple.’

It suddenly occurred to Phoebe that if Jed was married and living in Greece with a family of his own she would feel a whole lot better and her secret would be safe.

‘Now, why would you encourage me to marry? Maybe because you have plans of your own with regard to Julian Gladstone and you don’t want me telling him about our affair and how it ended?’ he mused. ‘Is that it, Phoebe? You want to keep our tragic little secret?’

Her face paled. That he should remind her of the miscarriage was bad enough, but if Jed ever knew the whole truth…

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Julian and I have been friends for years, and he knows everything about me. I just think you and Sophia look good together.’

‘And lovers for how long?’

‘That is none of your business,’ Phoebe said tightly.

He said nothing, just held her eyes with one of his dis-concertingly astute looks. Then, from holding her hand loosely in his, he suddenly linked his long lean fingers with hers and clasped them against his broad chest.

Phoebe knew she was in deep trouble.

She felt the warmth of his other hand flex at the back of her waist, and his long fingers trailed gently up her spine to find the smooth skin of her bare back beneath the heavy curtain of her hair. The blood seemed to heat in her veins, and long forgotten sensations flooded through her.

She did not want to feel like this. She did not want to feel anything with this man. She stiffened, every nerve stretched to breaking point, as she fought to stay in control. All she had to do was get through the rest of this dance, this one evening, and she would never see Jed again, she told herself.

‘Enough about other people, Phoebe,’ Jed drawled huskily, and dipped his dark head, bringing his mouth very close to her ear. ‘And enjoy the dance. You always loved dancing with me in the past and nothing has changed. Relax—you know you want to.’

He was so close she could inhale his clean male scent, the subtle hint of expensive cologne that was achingly familiar. His hand at her back stroked down and urged her into even closer contact with him.

Phoebe looked up and caught the sensual glitter in his eyes. Shockingly, she felt the hard pressure of his erection against her thigh, and a shiver snaked down her spine, curled in her belly. For a terrifying second she was tempted.

‘The chemistry between us is still there, Phoebe. I can feel you trembling,’ he declared huskily.

The girl he had known would have blushed and then eagerly melted against him. But Phoebe wasn’t that person any more. She had more courage and more self-respect than to succumb to an arrogant, over-sexed swine like Jed, and more importantly she had more than herself to protect…

The knowledge gave her strength, and she lowered her hand from his shoulder to shove against his chest. Tilting her head back, she looked straight up at him. ‘Remember where you are and save it for your girlfriend. As for trembling—that was a shiver of revulsion. You disgust me, Jed,’ she declared scathingly.

She was fierce, and the deliberately aimed blow to his ego was savage, but Jed Sabbides was a threat to the comfortable life she had made for herself, and she wanted to make absolutely sure he would never want to see or speak to her again.

He stopped. He looked down at her and she could sense the tension in his big body. His hands fell to his sides and she could see it in the dark eyes that surveyed her from head to toe. His mouth was tightly compressed, and she expected him to explode with anger. But he didn’t.

‘A bit of overkill there, Phoebe, but I get your point. The music has stopped—shall we join the others?’ And, taking her arm, he curled his firmly chiselled lips in a sardonic smile. ‘By the way, I am glad to see you still wear the clip I bought you. It looks even better with your hair so much longer.’

Phoebe had forgotten all about the damn clasp in her hair. It was the only piece of jewellery she had kept, and now she wished she had not. She blushed…

Jed knew enough about women to know Phoebe had lashed out at him not because she was disgusted but because she was scared by her own response. ‘So you can still blush, Phoebe.’ And, lifting her chin with his finger, he looked deep into her eyes. ‘I’m glad you kept something I gave you, Phoebe, though we both know it was not what you really wanted, and for that I am truly sorry,’ he said sincerely.

Her reaction astounded him. She gasped and twisted her head away, but not before he caught the flash of panic laced with fear in her eyes. He reached for her arm, but she shrugged him off and walked swiftly back to Julian without a word in response.

Phoebe’s reaction intrigued him. In his own way he had been trying to be compassionate by alluding to their shared past and her tragic miscarriage, not throw her into a panic, and he had to wonder why.

Seated in the back seat of Julian’s chauffeur-driven Bentley, Phoebe asked him how far it was to his apartment.

‘We are not going to my apartment, Phoebe, you can relax. I’ve instructed Max to take us back to Dorset. Much as I fancy you, I don’t want to be a stand in for another man. The journey will take an hour or so—plenty of time for you to tell me all about Jed Sabbides. You did know him, didn’t you?’ he asked softly.

‘Yes, I met him when I was at university.’ And she told Julian everything.

It was cathartic in way, and it put her reaction to Jed in perspective again.

‘The man did not strike me as that shallow, but it his loss,’ Julian said, and put an arm around her. ‘Forget about the rat.’

And she almost did…

Especially when on arriving home Julian smilingly warned her, “I’m not giving up totally, Phoebe. I’ll be away for a couple of weeks or so and I’ll call when I get back.’ Then he kissed her lightly on the lips and left.

Chapter Four

IN THE Athens head office of the Sabbides Corporation a brooding Jed lounged back in a black leather chair, his dark gaze fixed on the folder on the desk in front of him. Leo Takis, a friend and the head of a security firm he often used, had delivered it personally fifteen minutes ago, with the comment that according to his English operative Sid there was not much to get excited about. Jed had been staring at the damn thing ever since…

Did he really want to open it? He had a busy day ahead of him, and a host of more important things to attend too. But in the two weeks since the embassy ball in London the smooth flow of his life had been shot to hell—all because of Phoebe Brown.

He could not concentrate on work.

He had not proposed to Sophia. Quite the reverse. He had told her it was not going to work and returned to Greece the next morning. One of the reasons being that since meeting Phoebe at the party Jed had found it impossible to get her out of his head. Sophia and her father would probably never speak to him again.

The more he thought about the way Phoebe had behaved that night, the more he had a gut feeling he was missing something. He was a good poker player, though nowadays he only played the occasional private big money game with a few like-minded friends. And in poker parlance he was great at reading ‘tells’—and something was telling him Phoebe was trying to bluff him…

Her coldness, the way she had continued with the pretence that she had never met him before, the sensual response she had tried so hard to deny when he held her in his arms, and the odd look of fear and panic he had seen in her eyes as the music ended and they left the dance floor…

She had avoided so much as glancing at him again for the rest of the night—he knew because he had been watching her—and it had set his astute mind to wondering why.

Well—that was his excuse for hiring Leo’s discreet security agency…

But in reality seeing Phoebe again had aroused a host of memories he had thought successfully banished from his mind years ago—the foremost of which was being buried deep inside her hot, sleek body, with her fabulous legs locked around him.

Jed grimaced. He had pretty much been in a constant state of arousal ever since—except unfortunately after the ball, when he had followed Sophia into her bedroom and taken her in his arms, nothing had happened!

It had crossed his mind to persist, to fantasise about Phoebe…But in that moment the uncomfortable truth had hit him. He had lied to himself for years. He had never had better sex than he’d had with Phoebe—in fact for two years after their parting he hadn’t had sex at all! As for the couple of women since, he could not truthfully say whether or not what he had shared with Phoebe had been in some way responsible for his lacklustre and short-lived relationships with them.

With brutal honesty he had known then that his sensible plan to marry Sophia was never going to work. She was a friend, and deserved better than a husband who had no passion for her. Hence the break-up…

Jed picked up the folder. Inside was the details of Phoebe Brown’s life from the week she had left the London apartment. He had given Leo that date specifically, as he knew all too well what had happened before…He weighed the file in his hand, and it felt light.

Good sign or bad? He didn’t know, but what he did know was that he needed Phoebe back in his bed, to sate himself in her body and get rid of this lingering fascination for her once and for all…

Slowly he opened the file and began to read.

Five minutes later, he barely glanced at the photo of mother and child at the back of the brief report before dropping the lot on the desk. Then, swivelling in his chair, he stared out through the glass wall of his office into the bright light of the October sun. His broad brow creased in a thunderous frown and his dark eyes narrowed against the natural glare and the blaze of anger burning inside him.

A month after graduating from university Phoebe Brown had been back home, living with her aunt in a small village in Dorset—where Jed had guessed she had gone when he’d found the apartment empty. It was no surprise. She had spent a further year qualifying as a teacher, and was now employed in that capacity at a private girls’ school in Dorset. She had bought a rundown cottage attached to her aunt’s, and between them they had converted the property into one detached cottage. There she led a quiet, uneventful life with her family and was a well-respected member of the community and liked by everyone who knew her.

But what was a surprise, and what had caused Jed’s unexpected flash of rage, was in the detail of that family…

Phoebe was a single mother of a boy of four years old. Not unusual in this day and age. But what he had instantly realized, and what was anathema to Jed, was that the baby had been born only seven months and one week after the miscarriage of their child, and there was no father listed on the registration of its birth.

He couldn’t believe it. Deep down he didn’t want to, but he had too. It was there on the copy of the birth certificate. The baby had been born at Bowesmartin Cottage Hospital in the county of Dorset. The baby must have been premature—that was the obvious conclusion.

Well, the sweet, innocent Phoebe he had thought he had known was nothing to him. She was the past, and he should have left it at that. For all her beauty, she was beneath contempt in his eyes.

For years he had carried a lingering sense of guilt over what had happened between them, but not any more…So much for her constant avowals of love. It simply reinforced what Jed had always believed: there was no such thing as love, and women always had an agenda…

Phoebe could not have taken more than a week before falling into bed with another man and getting pregnant again. Maybe she was type of women who wanted a child more than she wanted a man? But in his experience it was older career woman who fell into that category—biological clock ticking syndrome, which certainly had not applied to Phoebe at the time.

What did he care? His brief flight of fancy in considering resuming their affair was just that…a momentary blip in his razor-sharp brain. Their relationship had finished long ago. What Phoebe Brown did with her life was nothing to him…

Turning back to his desk, determined to dismiss her from his thoughts once and for all and get some work done, he reached for the folder to put it away and hesitated.

Something about Phoebe and her son did not add up…With his vast experience in business and finance he knew that after analysing all known facts and the people involved if the figures were too incredible to be believed they were invariably false.

He picked up the photograph and looked at it again more closely. It had obviously been taken from a distance—not that surprising, as taking unauthorised pictures of young school children was a risky business in this day and age—and there were other women and children in the background. The features of the mother and child in the foreground were clear enough, though the color of the eyes was indecipherable, but it was definitely Phoebe standing by the school gates, smiling down at the small, sturdy dark-haired child holding her hand.

As he studied the image on the paper he had a sense of recognition that built and built the longer he examined the photograph.

He got to his feet, a steely and pitiless light gleaming in his dark eyes. If his suspicions were correct, Phoebe Brown had to be the greatest actress and the most devious, contemptible woman he had ever had the misfortune to meet.

With a face like thunder he walked into his secretary’s office and told her to cancel all his appointments in Athens until further notice. He was going to visit the London office. She must order the company jet to take him to England as soon as possible. He didn’t need Leo’s agency for what he had in mind. He was going to conduct his own very personal investigation, and if what he suspected was true he vowed he would make Phoebe pay every minute of every day for the rest of her life for her despicable lie…

‘Has he been any trouble?’ Phoebe asked her friend Kay, tightening her grip on Ben’s hand as he tried to pull her down the drive to the village street.

‘No, he was great. He played with Emma as good as gold.’

Phoebe lived on the outskirts of the village of Martinstead, and taught at a private girls’ school in the nearby town of Bowesmartin. Kay, her friend and house-mate from student days, had visited her when Ben was born and ended up married to the local vet. Her daughter was eighteen months younger than Ben, and Kay picked him up from the village infant school where Emma was attending the nursery section and kept him until Phoebe got back about an hour later and collected him.

‘Thanks. You have no idea how much I appreciate your taking care of him. Next week is half term, thank goodness. So it will only be another six weeks after that before Aunt Jemma returns from her holiday—if that is okay with you?’

‘Stop worrying, Phoebe. It’s not a problem. Now go, it is cold out here.’

‘Okay.’ Phoebe laughed, and with a wave strolled down the drive to the pavement, Ben skipping along at her side.

Her aunt had gone on holiday to Australia, and in the four days since she’d left Phoebe had come to realise just how much she had depended on her aunt to help with Ben over the years. She had been there for Phoebe when she gave birth, and later looked after Benjamin while Phoebe qualified as a teacher and then worked.