Greek Affairs: Tempted by the Tycoons: The Greek Tycoon's Convenient Bride / The Greek Tycoon's Unexpected Wife / The Greek Tycoon's Secret Heir

Theo’s mouth hardened, and he jerked a shoulder towards the table. ‘Shall we?’

He was gentleman enough to wait to sit until she was seated, but Rhiannon didn’t like the way he so quickly and coldly assessed her. Dismissed her. Lukas, she feared, felt the same way. He was simply better at hiding his feelings.

It didn’t matter anyway. She couldn’t let it matter.

Adeia brought in the first course—vine leaves stuffed with rice and herbs, and a separate dish of olives and feta marinated in olive oil.

It looked excellent, and with an audible growl of her stomach Rhiannon realised how hungry she was.

The first course was followed by moussaka, and a rack of lamb with herbs and served with rice.

It was delicious, and by the time dessert arrived—a nut cake flavoured with cloves and cinnamon—she was so full she felt the waistband of her skirt pinch uncomfortably.

She was also aware of Theo’s disapproval of his son. He never said anything outright; in fact he spoke slowly, as if he wanted to use as few words as possible, and even chose those with care.

Still, she saw the disapproval in the tightening of his mouth, the flatness in his eyes, the biting edge of his tone.

Lukas, to his credit, remained mild and relaxed throughout the whole meal, although Rhiannon noticed how his eyes darkened, blanked. His fist bunched on the tablecloth before he forced himself to shrug, nod, smile. Dismiss.

She wondered at the tension in the relationship, what secrets the Petrakides family harboured. What secrets Lukas hid behind the neutral expression, the cold eyes.

This was Annabel’s family. Fear and uncertainty churned in Rhiannon’s stomach as she thought of giving up her ward to these people.

She couldn’t. And she didn’t have to, she reminded herself. Not yet. Maybe never.

After cups of strong Greek coffee, Theo jerkily excused himself to bed. He walked stiffly from the room, leaving Rhiannon and Lukas alone amidst the flickering candles and the remnants of a fantastic meal.

‘That was wonderful … thank you.’ She dabbed at her lips with her napkin, suddenly aware of a palpable tension.

Lukas was rotating his coffee cup slowly between strong, brown fingers, his expression shuttered.

He looked up when she spoke, smiled easily, the darkness of his eyes clearing like the sun coming from behind storm clouds. ‘You’re not going to end the evening so soon?’

‘It’s late … I’m tired …’ She should be tired, but right now her senses were humming in a way that made her feel gloriously awake and alive. She knew to stay, to linger in the dim, intimate atmosphere of the room, would be dangerous for both of them.

For some reason this attraction had sprung up between them—a powerful force that they both had to avoid … for Annabel’s sake.

And for her own.

‘Will you walk with me on the beach?’ Lukas asked. ‘There need not be enmity between us, Rhiannon.’

‘Is that so?’ Rhiannon tried to laugh; it came out brittle. ‘It’s easy for you to say that, Lukas. You’re holding all the cards.’

‘I think,’ Lukas said carefully, ‘we both want what’s best for Annabel.’

‘We might disagree about what that is.’

He nodded in acknowledgement, then shrugged. ‘It’s a beautiful moonlit night. The photographers can’t see us in the dark. A few moments … You haven’t had any fresh air since you’ve been here, and the island is beautiful.’

‘I can’t leave Annabel. If she wakes …’

‘Adeia will listen for her,’ Lukas said. ‘She’d love to.’

Rhiannon hesitated. Perhaps getting to know Lukas would help. It might soften him to her case, to her hopes for Annabel. ‘All right,’ she agreed, not nearly as reluctantly as she knew she should. ‘A few moments.’

Outside the sound of the surf was a muted roar in the distance, and the air was cool and soft. Lukas led her down a paved path to the beach, a stretch of smooth sand that curved around tumbled rocks into the unknown.

He kicked off his shoes, and Rhiannon did the same, enjoying the silky softness between her toes.

They walked quietly down the shoreline for a few minutes, the only sound the lapping of waves.

‘Has this island been in your family long?’ she finally asked, unnerved by the silence that had stretched between them.

Lukas gave a short, abrupt laugh before shaking his head. ‘No, indeed not. Only about twenty-five years or so; the Petrakides fortune is very new.’

‘Is it?’ Rhiannon had not read that in the papers, but then she’d only been looking for salient details regarding the man she’d believed to be Annabel’s father. ‘I didn’t realise.’

‘My father started life as a street-sweeper,’ Lukas stated with matter-of-fact flatness. ‘He worked his way up to becoming landlord of a tenement in Athens, before banding together with a few partners and buying a block of derelict apartment buildings. They renovated them, turned them into modest, affordable housing units. And he moved up from there. Eventually he didn’t need partners.’

‘A real success story,’ Rhiannon murmured, and Lukas acknowledged this with a brusque nod.

‘Yes.’

They walked quietly for a moment, Lukas seeming lost in unhappy thoughts.

Success wasn’t everything, Rhiannon supposed. It couldn’t buy happiness. It couldn’t buy love.

‘Your father doesn’t seem like a happy man,’ she ventured, surprised by her own candour as well as by Lukas’s swift, acknowledging glance.

‘No, he isn’t,’ he agreed after a pause. ‘If he seems in a bad temper, it is in part because he is upset over the press. My father has wanted to prove to everyone that he deserves the wealth and success he has earned. He feels any stain on his reputation is a reflection of where he came from—the street. Although …’ Lukas’s face was obscured in shadow, but there was suddenly a different darkness to his tone. ‘Things have not been easy for him lately.’

Rhiannon’s steps slowed as memories clicked into place. ‘He’s dying, isn’t he?’ she said quietly.

He stiffened, turned in surprise. ‘How did you know?’

‘I should have realised sooner,’ she admitted. ‘I’m a palliative nurse—I work in hospices. I’ve been around a lot of people in his situation.’ She shook her head. ‘I assumed he was speaking so slowly because he thought I was stupid, but it’s because he’s losing his words, isn’t he? What does he have? A brain tumour?’

Lukas nodded stiffly. ‘The doctors have given him at most a few more months. It hasn’t, by the grace of God, affected him too much yet, although he occasionally forgets things. Sometimes it is just a word, other times a whole event.’ He shook his head. ‘It is frustrating, because he knows he is forgetting.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Rhiannon whispered. ‘I know how difficult a dying parent can be.’

‘Do you?’ Lukas’s glance was swift, sharp, assessing, yet there was a flicker of compassion in those silver eyes. ‘Tell me about yourself, Rhiannon.’

She shrugged, discomfited by the turn in the conversation he’d so quickly and effortlessly made. ‘My parents died three years ago,’ she said, as if it were of no consequence. ‘I cared for them until their deaths. It is a difficult thing to do.’

‘Yes … I suppose it is. And in the time since then?’

‘I studied nursing, went into hospice care. It made the most sense after my experience with my parents.’

‘A rather lonely-sounding life,’ Lukas remarked, his tone expressionless, his face in shadow.

‘No more than anyone else’s.’ Irritation prickled at his judgement. ‘I like to think I make a difference. Help people in a time of need that most of us would prefer to ignore.’

‘Indeed, that’s too true. I only meant that spending time with people twice your age no doubt makes it difficult to find friends with whom you can socialise.’

Rhiannon shrugged. She could hardly argue with that. She didn’t have a social life—had never had one. She gazed unseeingly at the dark stretch of water, at the stars strung above in an inky sky like diamonds pricked through cloth.

‘Why did you come here, Rhiannon?’ Lukas asked after a long moment, his voice musing. ‘Most women in your position I believe would not have made such an effort. They would have sent a letter, or gone through a solicitor. But to come to the resort, to the reception, and think you could convince me I was a child’s father—!’ He shook his head, smiling slightly in disbelief, but Rhiannon was only conscious of her own prickling, humiliated response.

‘I admit it was foolhardy,’ she said in a tight voice that bordered on strangled. She was glad the darkness hid her flushed face. ‘I thought a face-to-face confrontation would be the … strongest way to present Annabel to you.’

‘To get rid of her, you mean?’

‘You have a strange way of looking at things,’ she retorted. She stopped to turn and face him. ‘I wanted to give her to her father—her family. I would have been ignoring my responsibility if I hadn’t attempted to find you. Wouldn’t I? To keep her to myself, to make no effort to find a family who might want her, love her …’ She trailed off, shaking her head. ‘That would have been selfish.’

Lukas was silent for a moment. ‘You wanted to keep her?’ he asked in a different voice.

‘Of course I did—do! She’s a baby.’

‘An inconvenience, as you said.’

She glanced sharply at him, unsure if he thought that, or if he simply thought she did. ‘All children are inconveniences,’ she said flatly. ‘If you remember, I said that didn’t mean they weren’t worth it.’

‘So you want her, but you’re prepared to give her up?’ Lukas said musingly.

‘I was,’ Rhiannon emphasised. ‘Now things are different.’ She turned to face him. ‘You should know that I won’t give Annabel up now. I may have been willing to earlier, when I believed you were the father, when I thought you would love her. But I realise now the situation is completely different. I don’t know how I can fit into the family you envisage for her—your family—but I will have some part. I’m not walking out of her life now.’

Lukas regarded her silently for a long moment. Rhiannon’s heart raced and her face flamed, but she met his gaze, stony-faced and determined, her fists clenched at her sides.

‘What about your own life?’ he asked in a mild voice. ‘Your flat, your job, your friends? If Annabel is Christos’s child, her life will be in Greece. Are you prepared to move here?’ He quirked one eyebrow in cynical bemusement. ‘To give up everything for a child that isn’t even yours … for the child of a friend you hadn’t seen in ten years? A child,’ he continued, his voice turning hard, unyielding, damning, ‘that you didn’t really want? A child with a family in place—a family with far more resources than you could ever possibly have?’

Rhiannon’s mouth was dry, her heart like lead. When he framed it in such stark terms her situation seemed bleak indeed. ‘It’s not about resources,’ she said stiffly. ‘It’s about love.’

‘Can you really see yourself in Annabel’s life long-term?’ Lukas persisted. He kept his voice mild. ‘In Greece? Are you prepared to give up your life in Wales to care for a child that is no relation to you?’

His words wound around her heart, whispered their treacherous enticements in her mind. He was trying to dissuade her from staying, she knew. From complicating his life. And yet he made sense.

If she stayed in Greece she would have a half-life at best—the life of someone who lived on the fringes of a family. Again. Yet surely it was no less of a life than she had now.

‘You’ve done your duty,’ he continued. ‘You’ve brought her to her family. When the paternity issue is resolved, you can return to your home, your life, with a clear conscience. Isn’t that what you really want? Wasn’t that what you planned all along?’

His voice was so smooth, so persuasive, and it made Rhiannon realise how impossible a situation this truly was. Could she really move to Greece, ingratiate herself into the Petrakides family … if they would let her?

Yet she couldn’t leave Annabel. Not like this. ‘I don’t …’ Her mind swam, diving for words, and came up empty. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘It’s a lot to think about.’

‘Indeed.’ She heard the satisfaction in his voice and realised he thought he’d chipped away at her resolve. And perhaps he had. She wanted to be in Annabel’s life—she wanted Annabel to be loved.

Yet how could it happen? When Lukas had all the power and she had none? When this world—his world—was so foreign to her? So above her?

Could she ever even remotely fit in?

Lukas kept walking, and Rhiannon followed him. The waves lapped gently at their feet.

‘You said all children are inconveniences,’ he remarked after a moment. ‘Is that how you were viewed?’

Rhiannon’s breath came in a hitched gasp. She was surprised at his perceptiveness. She stared blindly out at the ocean, dark and fathomless, a stretch of blackness, a rush of sound.

‘I was adopted,’ she said after a long moment. ‘My parents never quite got over my arrival into their orderly lives.’

‘Many adopted children have loving homes, caring parents. Was that not the case with you?’

She closed her eyes, opened them. ‘My parents cared for me,’ she said, choosing her words carefully. She would not tarnish their memory. ‘In their own way. But I often wondered about my natural parents, and I didn’t want Annabel to be the same—especially if she discovered when she was older that she could have known her father and I never gave her the chance. I wanted to spare her that pain.’

Lukas was silent for a long moment. ‘I see,’ he finally said.

They continued to walk, Rhiannon with sudden, quick steps as if she wanted to escape the confines of the beach, the island, the reach of this man.

He saw too much, understood too much. And yet understood nothing at all.

Lukas grabbed her arm, causing her to stumble before he steadied her, turned her to face him. ‘Who are you trying to escape?’ His voice was soft, almost gentle, but his hands were firm on her arms and they burned.

‘I want to go back to the villa,’ Rhiannon said jerkily.

‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’ His arms moved up to her shoulders, drawing her closer. ‘I was trying to understand.’

‘You don’t understand anything,’ Rhiannon spat. ‘First you judge me as a blackmailer, then as a woman who is willing to give up a child like so much rubbish.’

‘I may have been mistaken in those beliefs,’ Lukas said quietly. There was no apology in his voice, merely statement of fact. ‘I realise now, Rhiannon, that you want what is best for Annabel. You believed that was entrusting her to her family; I think you’re right.’

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Rhiannon choked, and his hands tightened briefly on her arms.

‘You must trust that I will do my duty by Annabel,’ he said calmly, and Rhiannon let out a wild, contemptuous peal of laughter.

‘That’s the last thing I want,’ she cried. ‘I don’t want Annabel to be bound to someone by duty.’ It came out in a sneer, and Lukas looked at her in surprise.

‘Why on earth not?’

Rhiannon drew in a shuddering breath. He was close. Far too close. So close that in the pale moonlight bathing his face she could see the gold flecks in his eyes, the stubble on his chin.

‘You couldn’t understand.’

‘Not unless you explain,’ he agreed, his voice soft yet firm in the darkness.

‘I want you to let me go,’ she whispered, but it didn’t sound very convincing.

‘I will …’ Yet he was drawing her closer, and closer still, his lips a breath away from hers. Rhiannon let him hold her, let his breath fan her face, let her lips part open.

There was determination in his eyes, a fierce resolve, and Rhiannon knew that, like her, he was fighting against the tide of desire that washed over both of them, threatening to drag them under.

She knew by the light in his eyes, by the way his fingers bit into her shoulders.

And by the way he released her, suddenly, as if she’d scorched him, so she stumbled back in the sand.

‘I’m sorry.’ His voice was low. ‘I didn’t mean to start something here.’

‘To kiss me?’ Rhiannon challenged, irritated at how bereft she felt.

‘I know nothing can happen between us,’ Lukas said flatly. ‘We cannot complicate matters more with a meaningless affair.’

His assessment stung. A meaningless affair? Of course he would never consider her as a worthy candidate for girlfriend, bride, wife.

She was so far below him, his world. All she was worth was an affair. Dirty, cheap. Meaningless.

‘Nothing will happen between us,’ she restated stonily. ‘Because you need to do your damn duty.’

Lukas stared at her for a long moment. ‘I’ve never had someone think so little of me for doing what is right.’

Rhiannon swallowed the guilt that rose up at his quiet words. ‘I want you to want to do what is right,’ she said. ‘Not just do it out of some burdensome sense of responsibility.’

‘You say that as if it’s a dirty word.’

‘It is!’ Rhiannon couldn’t hold back the emotion which caused her voice to tremble, her throat to ache. ‘It is.’

They were standing only a few feet apart, tension binding them together like an invisible wire. Lukas reached out his hands, grabbed her shoulders, and pulled her towards him.

‘This is not about duty,’ he said in a savage whisper before kissing her. It was a hard, punishing kiss—a brand, a seal. When he released her they both were breathing in ragged gasps.

‘But you didn’t want that either, did you?’ Rhiannon said when she finally found her voice.

‘Yes,’ Lukas disagreed flatly. ‘The problem is, I want it too much. But I will not have it.’

He turned away, began striding down the beach. Alone in the darkness, Rhiannon had no choice but to follow him back to the distant lights of the villa.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE next morning Rhiannon avoided the dining room in exchange for some rolls, yoghurt and honey in the kitchen with Adeia.

She wanted to steer clear of Lukas after their argument last night, and so, with Annabel on her hip and a pair of towels under her arm, she headed for a secluded part of the beach. She slathered them both in suncream and then set up Annabel in a patch of sand. The baby was happy, digging busily, letting the sand trickle through her fingers, chortling with glee at the feel of it on her toes.

Rhiannon watched her, trying to ignore the ache of longing within her, the churning fear at the thought of the future. She wanted simply to enjoy the sun-kissed moment.

Lukas had been completely wrong in thinking she wanted to give Annabel away; it hurt to think he’d judged her so readily, thought so little of her.

It was the last thing she wanted. She’d fought desperately with her conscience over the matter; her heart had wanted to keep the baby, but her mind had told her the father had a right to know. A right to love.

And, her conscience had argued, wasn’t it selfish for a single woman in Rhiannon’s precarious financial position to keep a child she had no real right to simply because she wanted someone to love? To be loved by someone?

Wasn’t it selfish and pathetic?

Yet now, she thought grimly, she might not have the opportunity. Paternity suits, custody battles …

She should have considered this sooner, she supposed. She should have thought of all the possible outcomes to confronting Lukas Petrakides. If only her heart hadn’t deceived her with promises of fairy tale endings and happily-ever-afters.

She really was pathetic.

Annabel looked up, gurgled and pointed, and Rhiannon froze. She knew. She could feel him behind her, picture his easy, long-limbed stride.

‘Good morning.’ Lukas approached them and crouched down next to Annabel. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and olive-green shorts. He looked clean and strong and wonderful.

Rhiannon tore her gaze away. ‘Good morning.’

‘Sleep well?’ He gave her a questioning glance even as he held Annabel’s chubby fist, poured sand into her waiting palm. She giggled in delight.

‘No,’ Rhiannon confessed irritably. ‘Did you?’

His smile was rueful, honest. ‘No.’

She was gratified by the admission, although she remained silent.

‘She’s a cheerful little thing, isn’t she?’ Lukas said after a moment, as Annabel grabbed his hands and attempted to bring one lean finger towards her open mouth. ‘And teething too, I suppose?’

‘Watch out—she has two front teeth, and they’re sharp.’

Gently Lukas disengaged his finger from Annabel’s grasp. ‘Thank you.’

‘If Christos is Annabel’s father, who will look after her?’ Rhiannon asked suddenly. She needed to know. An idea had begun to form in her mind—hopeless, impractical, her only chance. ‘She’ll need a nanny, won’t she?’ she continued, and Lukas regarded her shrewdly.

‘Undoubtedly.’

‘Better for it to be someone she knows,’ Rhiannon continued, and Lukas’s mouth tightened.

‘Infants form attachments easily. In any case, if she is Christos’s child, I will adopt her.’

The thought weighed as heavily as a stone on her heart. She swallowed, looked away.

Lukas laid a steadying hand on her arm. ‘I realise your own adoptive parents might not have been ideal, but this will be different.’

‘Oh?’ Rhiannon forced herself to look at him. ‘How?’

‘I will care for her—’ Lukas began, looking slightly, strangely discomfited.

‘My parents cared for me too.’ Rhiannon cut him off. ‘But let me tell you, Lukas, duty is a hard parent. It doesn’t kiss your scrapes better, or cuddle you at night, or check for monsters under the bed. It doesn’t make you feel loved, make you believe that no matter what happens, what you do, there’ll be a place to come home to, arms to put around you. Duty,’ she finished flatly, ‘is a cold father.’ She stared blindly down at the sand, trying to rein her emotions, her memories, back under control.

Lukas’s fingers grasped her chin, tilted it so she was looking at him, and she knew he could see the hurt, the pain shadowing her eyes.

‘Is that how your father was?’ he asked quietly. ‘Your mother?’

Rhiannon shrugged. ‘I don’t blame them. They did the best they could.’

‘But it wasn’t enough, was it? And you’re afraid that Annabel will suffer as you did?’

‘Yes, I am,’ she admitted. ‘And shouldn’t I be? You’ve already shown me what a cold, restrained person you are.’

The look he gave her was full of hidden heat. ‘Have I?’ he murmured, his tone so languorous that Rhiannon jerked her chin from his hand, scooted a few feet away.

‘Yes. In terms of how you see your responsibility towards Annabel.’

He shrugged, spread his hands. ‘I can only promise to do what is right. To give her every opportunity, every comfort.’

‘That’s not enough.’

‘It will have to be.’

She knew it was more than most men would give—more than she had any right to expect. But it wasn’t enough. She wouldn’t let it be enough.

Because she knew how duty without love became a burden, a weight. A resentment. As it had become with her. Lukas couldn’t see that, couldn’t understand.

A loud whirring filled the air, and Rhiannon blinked up in surprise as a helicopter came into sight.

‘That’s not the press, is it?’ she asked, one hand shading her eyes, and Lukas shook his head.

‘No, it is a Petrakides helicopter.’ He pointed to the side of the craft. ‘See the entwined Ps? That is our emblem.’

Rhiannon saw the entwined letters, first in the Roman alphabet, then in Greek. ‘What is a Petrakides helicopter doing here?’ she asked.

Lukas took her hand in his, tugged. ‘Come and see.’ There was a surprising smile on his face, like that of a little boy, and, scooping up Annabel, Rhiannon followed him to the landing pad.

A young Greek man emerged from the helicopter as they approached, and Lukas called a greeting. The man called back, and began unloading boxes and parcels from the body of the chopper.