The Greek Tycoons

A warm welcome to all our readers; it’s cold outside, but the books Harlequin Presents has got for you in January will leave you positively glowing!

Raise your temperature with two right royal reads! The Sheikh’s Innocent Bride, by top author Lynne Graham, whisks you away to the blazing dunes of the desert in a classic tale of a proud sheikh’s desire for the young woman employed to clean his castle. Meanwhile, Robyn Donald is back with another compelling Bagaton story in The Royal Baby Bargain, the latest installment in her immensely popular New Zealand-based BY ROYAL COMMAND miniseries.

Want the thermostat turned up? Then why not travel with us to the glorious Greek islands, where Bought by the Greek Tycoon, by favorite author Jacqueline Baird, promises searing emotional scenes and nights of blistering passion, and Susan Stephens’s Virgin for Sale—the first title in our steamy new miniseries UNCUT—sees an uptight businesswoman learning what it is to feel pleasure in the hands of a real man!

For Cathy Williams fans, there’s a new winter warmer: in At the Italian’s Command, the heart of a notoriously cool, workaholic tycoon is finally melted by a frumpy but feisty journalist. And try turning the pages of rising star Melanie Milburne’s latest release—Back in her Husband’s Bed, about a marriage rekindled in sunny Sydney, Australia, is almost too hot to handle!

For a full list of titles and book numbers, see inside the front cover (opposite)—and enjoy!

MILLS & BOON

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All about the author…

Jacqueline Baird

Jacqueline was born and raised in Northumbria, U.K. She met her husband when she was eighteen. Eight years later, after many adventures around the world, she came home and married him. They still live in Northumbria and have two grown-up sons.

Jacqueline’s number one passion is writing. She has always been an avid reader and she had her first success as a writer at the age of eleven, when she won first prize in the Nature Diary of the Year competition at school. But she always felt a little guilty because her diary was more fiction than fact.

She always loved romance novels and when her sons went to school all day, she thought she would try writing one. She’s been writing for Harlequin Presents ever since, and she still gets a thrill every time a new book is published.

When Jacqueline is not busy writing, she likes to spend her time traveling, reading and playing cards. She was a keen sailor until a knee injury ended her sailing days, but she still enjoys swimming in the sea when the weather allows.

She visits a gym three times a week and has made the surprising discovery that she gets some good ideas while doing the mind-numbingly boring exercises on the cycling and weight machines.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

JEMMA BARNES, pencil in hand, doodled in the notebook in front of her on the table, paying little attention to the conversation going on around her. Her father, MD of the company Vanity Flair, had insisted that she attend this board meeting now that she was heir to her late Aunt Mary’s estate, and therefore now one of the principal shareholders in the company. She had no idea why he wanted her there—stock flotations and the like were a foreign language to her. In fact, she had enough trouble coping with the monetary side of her own business—as Liz, her best friend and partner in the florist shop they jointly owned in Chelsea, would readily confirm!

‘Jemma?’ The strident tones of her father’s voice cut through her reverie. ‘Do you agree?’

Lifting her head, she realised the dozen or so people around the table were all staring at her. Her amber eyes clashed with the twinkling brown ones of the man opposite—a Mr Devetzi from Greece. Her father had introduced Jemma to him earlier and she rather liked the old man. Apparently he had once met her aunt Mary at her holiday home on the island of Zante—the same place that Jemma had spent her last holiday with her aunt. It wasn’t a holiday she liked to recall for a variety of reasons—one being that her aunt had died a few months later.

Now a hint of a smile played around the old man’s mouth, and she knew he’d realised from her panicked expression that she had no idea of the question. His smile broadened reassuringly, and with a wink and a nod of his white head he gave her the answer.

‘Yes, of course, Father,’ Jemma agreed, and the meeting ended.

‘Why on earth didn’t you get in touch with me?’ Luke Devetzi demanded forcibly in Greek, and stared down at his grandfather, lounging back on the sofa with one heavily bandaged ankle propped up on a footstool. ‘You know I would have come the minute you called.’ He raked frustrated fingers through his dark hair. ‘And what are you doing in London anyway? After your last heart scare I seem to recall your doctor forbidding you to travel.’

‘Business,’ Theo Devetzi declared bluntly.

‘But you retired from the fish business years ago,’ Luke reminded him.

‘Not that business. As a matter of fact I did call you six days ago, but I was informed by some woman in your New York office that you had already left for a long weekend in the Hamptons and were not to be disturbed unless it was a dire emergency.’ The old man arched one sardonic eyebrow. ‘As it was only a courtesy call, to tell you I was going to use your London apartment for a few days, I saw no reason to bother you.’

Luke stifled a grimace, but he had no defence; he had left just such instructions, and he felt guilty as hell. His grandparents had turned their lives upside down thirty-eight years ago when Anna, their only daughter, had got pregnant by a yachtsman visiting the Greek island where they lived. Unwilling to subject Anna and her unborn child to the censure of the small community, they had relocated to Athens, where no one knew them. Then, when Anna had died in childbirth, they had been left to bring Luke up on their own.

Luke had never known who his biological father was until after he’d graduated from university at the age of twenty-one, with a degree in Business Studies. He had refused to follow his grandfather into the wholesale fish business, instead signing up as assistant purser on a luxury cruise liner. In a fit of temper Theo had declared he was just like his feckless French father—a so-called aristocrat who spent his life sailing around in his yacht seducing young girls. In the ensuing argument Luke had discovered his grandfather had known his father’s name all along.

Luke had stormed out and gone to find his father. He had discovered the man living on a large estate in France—with his wife and two sons both older than Luke. When Luke had confronted him he had sneered and disowned him with the words, ‘I have had dozens of women in my life, and even if I had been single at the time I would never have married your Greek peasant of a mother.’ Then, with the help of his two equally obnoxious sons, he’d had Luke thrown off his land.

Luke had gone ahead and joined the cruise liner. There he had struck up a friendship with an elderly New York banker, who had enlisted Luke’s aid in reading the stock market. When the ship had docked in New York, impressed by Luke’s natural ability to spot a winner, the same man had offered Luke a job with his firm. Luke had become the proverbial whiz kid, and four years later had started his own investment banking company—Devetzi International.

The circumstances of his birth no longer bothered Luke, and hadn’t done for years. He viewed his grandfather’s set features now with a mixture of frustration and love. ‘Nothing you do or want can ever be too much trouble for me, Theo. You only have to ask and it will be given. You must know that.’

Theo was getting old. His heavily lined face showed the signs of his seventy-seven years, and yet his deep brown eyes still held the determination that had seen him build up a business with his best friend Milo. Luke owed his life to this man.. as far as he was concerned Theo was the only family he had.

‘Humph. Fine words, Lycurgus, but they cut no ice with me.’

Luke stiffened. He knew the old man was always either angry or after something when he used Luke’s full name—chosen for him by his grandmother because it meant wolf-hunter, and his silver-grey eyes had reminded her of a wolf.

‘What I wanted was to see you married with children, to see the continuation of our bloodline. But given your apparent aversion to marriage and your choice in women I have almost given up hope.’ Lifting a magazine from the coffee table, he waved it at Luke. ‘Just look at your latest woman—probably the one you have spent the last few days with.’ He flicked to the centre page. ‘Davina Lovejoy is about as likely to make a good wife and mother as fly,’ he snorted.

Theo was right—Luke had been dating Davina for the last few weeks and had spent a long weekend with the lady in question. He could tell his grandfather that he had no intention of marrying the lady anyway.. but, dammit, why should he? He didn’t exactly appreciate Theo interfering in his sex life. And, as for marriage, Luke had little trust in women for the long term. In his experience he had found the married ones just as eager to get into his bed as the single women he met, if not more so—not that he was at all interested in getting involved with married women. The only exception to that particular rule still nagged his conscience to this day…

Belatedly he tuned back in to Theo’s rapid-fire Greek.

‘…and I thought you had more taste, but obviously I was wrong. Have you read this?’ Theo waved the magazine again. ‘She had a nose job at nineteen! That I can understand, and even the breast enhancement I could tolerate, but this last thing… Well, I have never heard of anything like it in my life! A false bottom! You might as well take a plastic doll to your bed,’ he exclaimed.

‘What? Let me see that,’ Luke snapped, and took the magazine from Theo’s hand. A quick glance told him his grandfather was right. A photograph of Davina and himself leaving a restaurant—a month earlier, if he wasn’t mistaken—followed by an article all about Davina, her physical enhancements, and the new man in her life.

A vitriolic Greek curse escaped him, and he flung the magazine back on the table in disgust.

‘My sentiments exactly,’ Theo agreed, with the slightest of smiles lightening his leathered face.

Luke ran his hand through his dark hair again. ‘I never even realised,’ he muttered. And, as he considered himself something of a connoisseur of women, that was some admission!

Sinking down onto the sofa beside Theo, he gave the old man a wry smile. ‘I met Davina because she’s an interior designer, and my PA in New York hired her to redecorate my apartment in the city. Propinquity did the rest.’ He didn’t add that it had only been when showing the woman around his apartment it had suddenly struck him he had not bedded a woman in over a year and it was time he did something about it. ‘But if it gives you any satisfaction, Theo, I have no intention of marrying her.’

When the apartment was finished, in a couple of weeks, so would be his involvement with Davina. Beautiful and intelligent though she was, this last weekend had not been the roaring success he had hoped for. Davina was a very experienced lover, and the sex had been good, but for some reason it had left him feeling oddly unsatisfied.

‘Good! In that case you can do me a favour,’ Theo stated. ‘Since your grandmother’s death I’ve been making a few discreet enquiries about buying back my family home on Zante. I sold it to the local butcher when we moved from the island to Athens, but the house and the cove had been in my family for generations. I want it back,’ he declared emphatically. ‘I was conceived on that beach, I courted your grandmother there, and your mother was conceived on the same beach. It has a thousand happy memories for me, and when you get to my age that is about all you have left.’

Theo sighed deeply, then went on, ‘I did some digging and discovered the butcher died eight years later, and his family sold it for cash to a nameless businessman from Athens. According to gossip, he then gifted it to his mistress—an Englishwoman called Mary James; a botanist from London. I caught up with her on the island one time. She was a lovely lady, and she told me about her work and the company she had founded with her sister called Vanity Flair, producing a line of homeopathic, antiallergenic make-up. Later, her sister married the company accountant, one David Sutherland, and he was instrumental in expanding the business into retail outlets all over Europe.

‘But when I asked her if she would sell me the house on Zante she flatly refused, and closed up like a clam. So when I heard the company was to be floated on AIM—the alternative investment market in London—with the intention of raising money to fund expansion into America, I bought a block of shares on the off-chance that at some point they might give me some leverage in trying to persuade Miss James into selling my family home back to me.’

Luke frowned. Most of the companies floated on AIM were high-risk businesses. ‘Take my advice—sell up and get out now. As for your old home—forget it. Anyway, I thought you liked living in the house I had built for us all? You have never complained.’

‘No, but, beautiful as it is, since your grandmother died I find it a bit lonely—you’re rarely there.’

‘A good point,’ Luke conceded. The fact that he’d had no idea Theo was interested in buying back the property on Zante shamed him, and revealed just how little real attention he had given his grandfather in the past few years, how much he had taken him for granted. ‘I promise I will try to get home more often, Theo. But it doesn’t alter the fact that Zante is a very popular tourist destination now. It’s nothing like when you lived there—you’d hate it.’ Luke knew because he had berthed his yacht for one night on the island last summer, and, beautiful though the scenery still was, he had departed quickly the next morning.

‘No, you’re wrong. At last I can see a way to recover what was once mine.’ Theo’s eyes sparkled with more excitement than Luke had seen in a long time. ‘I discovered that Mary James died some months ago, and I immediately started to buy up more stock.’ Theo held up a veined hand. ‘And before you say it, I know the stock has been falling recently—but that was to my advantage because I got it cheap.’

If the company went down the tubes it wouldn’t be cheap, but Luke shook his head and kept his mouth shut, not wanting to argue further with Theo.

‘I received a call last week to attend a special board meeting of Vanity Flair, as one of the larger stockholders. I went to the meeting on Friday, and I had a drink with Sutherland afterwards. The only reason I’ve stayed on here the last few days was because he’s invited me to dinner at his house this evening, and also to his daughter’s birthday party this coming weekend.’

‘That’s very interesting, but it doesn’t explain how you sprained your ankle, nor that if Milo hadn’t contacted me in New York last night I would have known nothing about it.’

‘Yes, you would. Because I was going to call you myself as soon as I got back from the hospital but Milo preempted me. Incidentally, I sprained my ankle yesterday, tripping down the steps of this damn fool sunken living room of yours.’ He looked disdainfully around the plush curving black hide seating arrangement in the obviously bachelor penthouse.

‘Well, at least you had the sense to bring Milo with you,’ Luke murmured. ‘This is a service apartment, and I hate to think what might have happened if you’d been on your own.’

‘Naturally he came with me,’ Theo said. ‘Milo is just as keen as I am to see me get my family home back. Zante is where he and I first met and became friends. He used to stay with your grandmother and I whenever his fishing boat came into the harbour. I always thought he had a soft spot for your mother, but it wasn’t to be…’

Luke almost groaned, wishing Theo would get to the point, but he knew from experience that there was no way to hurry him. ‘So, how are you going to get it back, then?’ he enquired.

‘I’m not. You are,’ Theo declared with a broad grin. ‘I met Sutherland’s daughter at the board meeting. She’s a delightful woman who knows nothing at all about the family business—though she does run her own. We had an interesting conversation, and I discovered she was attending the meeting only because her father had told her to. She inherited everything from her aunt—shares in the company and, more importantly, the property on Zante.’

‘Thank heaven for that.’ Luke rose and crossed to the drinks trolley, poured a slug of whisky into a glass and added a generous splash of iced water. ‘So the daughter is selling it and you want me to pay for it, right? No problem…’ Lifting the glass to his mouth, he took a refreshing drink, watching the old man with tender eyes.

‘No, I’d just got around to asking her if she would sell the villa, and she’d just told me she didn’t think she could, when the meeting was called to order. I don’t need your money, but I do need you to go to the dinner party tonight in my place. Use some of that skill you have at charming the ladies on the daughter. Show her a good time—wine and dine her for the rest of the week and soften her up a bit. Then, when I attend her birthday party on Saturday night, I can appeal to her finer feelings and explain to her that it is an old man’s wish to own the home of his ancestors and pass it on to his grandson. When I ask her again to sell me the property, she will be ready to say yes to anything she thinks you want.’

‘You want me to seduce her, you mean?’ Luke met Theo’s intent gaze and lifted one eyebrow in mocking cynicism. ‘You do surprise me, considering you have spent years complaining about my womanising ways. Shame on you, Theo!’

‘You don’t need go that far—not that it would be any hardship, I’m sure, for she is a very lovely lady.’ Theo grinned. ‘If I was forty years younger, I’d be there myself.’

Luke laughed. ‘You’re incorrigible, old man, but okay. You arrange with Sutherland for me to dine in your place tonight, and I will do my level best to charm the woman. In the meantime, I need to shower and dress.’ Draining his drink, he added, ‘What is the woman’s name?’

Theo was already reaching for the telephone to call Sutherland. ‘J something…Jem…or Jan, I think,’ his grandfather said, dialling a number.

Rolling his shoulders to relieve the ache in his back from long hours of travel and tension, Luke headed for his bedroom wondering just what he had let himself in for, hoping this Jan woman would turn out to be halfway presentable.

It was after midnight when Luke finally returned to his apartment.. tired, but with a self-satisfied smile on his darkly handsome face.

‘So what happened? Did you meet her? Did you like her? And, more importantly, did she like you?’ Theo demanded as soon as he walked in the door.

‘Yes to all three.’ Luke grinned. ‘But you shouldn’t have waited up.’

‘Never mind that…just tell me what happened.’

Luke collapsed on the sofa and loosened his tie and shirt collar. ‘I met Sutherland and he introduced me to his daughter Jan, and by an amazing coincidence I knew her.’

‘You knew her? Are you sure?’

‘Believe me, old man, I know her. I met her in New York years ago. She was working as a model then, and I dated her a few times. So you have absolutely nothing to worry about; the deal is virtually in the bag, I promise you. Jan was delighted to see me, and was all over me like a rash. I’m taking her out to dinner tomorrow night, and by the party on Saturday she will be desperate to gobble me whole.’ Rising to his feet, Luke added, ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to bed—and I suggest you do the same.’

‘Phone, Jemma—it’s your stepmother,’ Liz yelled.

Busy in the workshop, planting a hanging basket with summer annuals, Jemma didn’t appreciate the interruption. Sighing, she put down her tools, pulled off her protective gloves and picked up the extension on the workbench.

‘Yes, Leanne?’ Jemma only half listened to her stepmother for the next few minutes. Her own mother had died when she was twelve, after a long illness, and her father had married his secretary six months later—a single mother with a sixteen-year-old daughter, Janine, who had already left school and started a career as a model.

At the time Jemma had been attending boarding school, so the two girls had not been very close—more friends than family—but her father had officially adopted Janine, so they all shared the same surname.

‘You do understand, Jemma?’

‘Yes, perfectly.’ Jemma finally got a chance to speak. ‘I’ve ordered all the flowers you requested, and I’ll be there early on Saturday to decorate the house for Jan’s birthday party.’ Jemma put the phone down and glanced at Liz. ‘You’re sure you don’t mind managing with just young Patty on Saturday afternoon? We could close the shop and you could come with me?’

‘No, thanks,’ Liz replied. ‘You know I can only take the beautiful Janine in very small doses. What birthday is it this time—her twenty-eighth for the fourth year running?’

‘Don’t be catty! But you’re right—although I’ve been sworn to secrecy. Hey, apparently Jan met an old boyfriend at the dinner party last night.’

‘The same dinner party you ducked out of, pleading a headache yet again?’ Liz mocked.

‘Yes—well, apparently he is still a bachelor and incredibly wealthy. Jan wants to hook him, so there’s to be absolutely no mention of her real age.’

‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ Liz chuckled, a wicked glint in her dark eyes.

‘Naughty!’ Jemma smiled.

‘I only wish you would be naughty once in a while.’ Liz sighed. ‘It’s time you got out and enjoyed yourself again.’

‘Well, I am going to the party on Saturday,’ Jemma said, walking across to the centre counter and taking the order book from Liz’s hand. ‘And it’s time you went for lunch. Patty’s due back any minute, and Ray won’t be long.’ Patty was a trainee and Ray was a qualified florist, but he spent most of his time as their delivery driver.

‘Okay, I’m going. But I mean it, Jemma. Alan has been dead two years now, and, much as you loved him, it is time you started dating again—or at least considered the possibility, instead of freezing out every handsome man who so much as smiles at you. Haven’t you heard? Apart from being no fun, total celibacy is bad for one’s health.’

To Jemma’s undying shame, she had not been totally celibate in the last two years—she had made one enormous mistake, which she had vowed never to repeat, but she didn’t have the nerve to tell her best friend the truth. Instead Jemma threw a damp florist’s sponge at her. ‘Go to lunch!’