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The billionaire is back...
And he will legitimize his secret heir!
Finding himself at Anna Moore’s door after tracking down the mysterious beauty is the least shocking part of Dimitri Kyrakiou’s day. Because discovering the consequence of their one spectacular night has floored him! To secure his child, ruthless Dimitri must make Anna his wife. But the only thing harder than convincing Anna to be his convenient bride is trying to ignore their red-hot attraction...
Lose yourself in this intense secret baby story!
PIPPA ROSCOE lives in Norfolk near her family and makes daily promises to herself that this is the day she’ll leave the computer to take a long walk in the countryside. She can’t remember a time when she wasn’t dreaming about handsome heroes and innocent heroines. Totally her mother’s fault, of course—she gave Pippa her first romance to read at the age of seven! She is inconceivably happy that she gets to share those daydreams with you. Follow her on Twitter, @PippaRoscoe.
Also by Pippa Roscoe
Conquering His Virgin Queen
The Winners Circle miniseries
A Ring to Take His Revenge
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.
Claimed for the Greek’s Child
Pippa Roscoe
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ISBN: 978-1-474-08752-0
CLAIMED FOR THE GREEK’S CHILD
© 2019 Pippa Roscoe
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
www.millsandboon.co.uk
For Laurie,
Who put up with me in New York for six weeks while I disappeared off to my writing table on the roof of our apartment at stupid o’clock in the morning, with my rocket fuel coffee, a fan instead of air-conditioning and a dental crisis!
Although Pin-Up Girl cocktails, an American Football game, incredible food, a trip to Boston and Christmas decorations at Macy’s hopefully made up for it!
New York, and this book, wouldn’t have been the same without you. Xx
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
Extract
About the Publisher
‘MR KYRIAKOU? WE’LL be landing in about twenty minutes.’
Dimitri gave a curt nod to the stewardess on board the Kyriakou Bank’s private jet. He wasn’t capable of more than that. His jaw was clenched so tightly it would have taken a crowbar to pry it open. The only thing that had successfully passed his lips since his boarding the plane had been a whisky. Only one. That was all he would allow himself.
He glanced out of the window and, although he should have been seeing the soft white clouds that hovered above the English Channel, instead he saw the slope of a beautiful woman’s shoulder. Naked, exposed...vulnerable. Beneath the palm of his hand he could feel the silky texture of her skin. His fingers twitched at the memory.
He ran a hand across his face, rubbing at the exhaustion of the last year, allowing the stubble of his jaw to scratch at the itch that made him want to turn the plane around. To go back to the bed where the beautiful woman lay—probably still asleep. He’d snuck out like a thief. An analogy that caught in the back of his throat, and for an awful moment he thought he might actually choke.
He couldn’t fathom what he’d been thinking. But that was the problem. He hadn’t been. Despite the knowledge that this day had been coming, the knowledge of exactly what would greet him the moment the plane touched down in the States, Dimitri had needed one night. Just one night...
Yesterday, he’d left Antonio Arcuri and Danyl Nejem Al Arain—his best friends and fellow members of the Winners’ Circle Racing Syndicate—behind at the Dublin Race Series and allowed instinct to take over. As he’d slid into the driver’s seat of the powerful black supercar the thrust of the engine met the need for freedom coursing through his veins. He’d followed the road out of the small city, past the huge doors of the Guinness brewery, through dark streets, along roads that slowly found their way into rolling green countryside. It was only then that he’d felt able to breathe. Only then that he’d been able to block out what was to come.
Unconsciously he’d manoeuvred the sleek, dark car down impossibly windy roads, allowing only the thrill of the powerful machine beneath him to fill his senses. Something was driving him—he wasn’t willing to give it a name.
Dimitri had slowed only when the car’s petrol light came on. He’d found himself in a small village and, if it had had a name, he hadn’t noticed. An old pub with a black sign and peeling paint defiantly stared down an even older church at the opposite end of the one street that divided the village. He followed the road to the end, where, instead of finding a petrol station, he came to a large gravel drive in front of a small bed and breakfast.
To Dimitri the Irish were known for two things: hospitality and whisky. And he was in great need of both. As he turned off the ignition he was hit with a wave of exhaustion so intense he wasn’t entirely sure that he could make it out of the car. He sat back and pressed his head angrily into the back of the seat. He’d run and he hated himself for it. All this time, this planning... Frustration at the shame he was about to bring to Antonio and Danyl... It hurt Dimitri in a way he hadn’t imagined, hadn’t thought possible after all he’d endured in his thirty-three years.
He allowed that anger to propel him from the car and over to the door of the bed and breakfast, the sound of his fist pounding on the door jarring even to his own ears. He glanced at his watch for the first time in what felt like hours and was surprised to find that it was so late. Perhaps the proprietor was asleep. He looked back to the car, wondering how much further it would get, wondering whether he should turn back, when the door opened.
The moment he caught her large green eyes looking up at him he knew he was doomed.
She let him in, quietly, one finger to her lips and the other hand making a ‘gently, gently’ motion. She beckoned him through to a small seating area decorated with just about everything that he’d expected a small Irish bed and breakfast to have, but his gaze narrowed on the small wooden, clearly well-stocked bar.
‘You’re after a room?’ she almost whispered.
Was he?
‘Just for the night.’
Her eyes assessed him, but not in the sexual way he was used to from beautiful women. It was as if she were doing mathematics—on his expensive clothes, a watch that was probably worth half a yearly intake for this place, the car outside. He wasn’t offended.
Dimitri took out his wallet and removed all the euros he had in it. What did it matter to him? He couldn’t take them where he was going. He placed the thick bundle of notes on the bar.
‘No, sir. That’s not...that’s not necessary. It’ll be sixty euros for the night, an extra five if you’d like breakfast.’
The Irish lilt to her voice was a little surprising to him. Her skin wasn’t the light, freckled complexion that had populated the racecourse back in Dublin—it was closer to his own Greek colouring, only without the benefit of the sun she seemed pale. For a moment he allowed himself to imagine this woman on a Greek island, sun-kissed and glorious, the sun’s rays deepening the natural promise of her skin tone. Long, dark tendrils of hair had been swept up into a messy ponytail that should have made her look young, rather than chaotically beautiful. Loose tendrils from a grown-out fringe played along her jawline, accentuating her cheekbones and contrasting with the lighter golden tones in hauntingly emerald-coloured eyes.
Forcing his attention away from her, he looked at the bottles behind the bar. Scanning them, he was slightly disappointed. If he’d had a choice, none of them would have been it. But beggars couldn’t be choosers.
‘No breakfast. But I’ll take a bottle of your best whisky.’
Again, her eyes were quick and assessing. Not calculating. That was it. That was what was different about her. There wasn’t anything selfish in her gaze, nothing judgemental. She was simply trying to figure him out. As if making up her mind, she slipped behind the small bar, not even looking at the obscene amount of money she was yet to touch, and she pulled down two cut crystal glasses housed in a hidden shelf above the counter. The way she resolutely ignored the money made him wonder if he’d offended her and a shadow of guilt stirred within him.
She placed the two glasses on the wooden bar top, waiting for his reaction, to see if he would object to her joining him. It was his turn to assess. She’d barely said two words to him. She looked to be in her early twenties. The white shirt she wore as a uniform was ill-fitting, as if made for someone bigger than her. The worn name tag sewn onto the shirt pocket said ‘Mary Moore’. She didn’t look much like a Mary. But he skimmed over these small details in preference of one: there was something behind her eyes. Something that called to him.
He nodded, allowing her to proceed. Instead of reaching for one of the bottles behind her, she bent beneath the bar and pulled out one that was more expensive. The good stuff saved for special occasions. Well, he supposed this was a special occasion.
She poured the amber liquid into each glass and, when finished, pushed one glass towards him and picked up the other.
‘Sláinte,’ she had said.
‘Yamas,’ he’d replied.
And they both drank deeply.
The plane banked to the right as it prepared to come in to land. Whether it was the drink from the night before, or the one from two hours ago, he could still taste whisky on his tongue, he could still taste her. As the plane descended towards the runway, images flashed through his mind. The first taste of her lips, the feel of her heart beating beneath the palm of his hand, her perfect breasts, her thigh as he moved it apart from the other. The feel of her wrapped around him and her thrilled cry as he sank deeply into her. The ecstasy he found as they climaxed together, swathed in each other. The memory of the scream he’d silenced with an impassioned kiss was drowned out by the roar of the backward thrust of the small jet engine as they came in to land at JFK.
Even the air stewardess seemed reluctant to open the cabin door. Her smile was sad as he disembarked, as if she too knew what was about to happen. But she couldn’t. Only he, and perhaps two others in the whole world, did—the lead investigator, and whoever it was who had really perpetrated the crime.
At the bottom of the small metal steps stood about twenty men in blue windbreakers with yellow initials marking them to be FBI agents. Gun belts with handcuffs and batons carefully held in place sat heavily around each man’s waist.
He stepped down towards the tarmac. Looking straight into the eyes of the lead agent, Dimitri Kyriakou, international billionaire, held out his hands before him—as he’d seen done in movies, as he’d known he would have to do long before this flight, long before last night—and as the steel handcuffs were clasped around his wrists he forced his head to remain high.
CHAPTER ONE
Present day
Dear Dimitri,
Today you found me.
DIMITRI GUIDED THE car down roads he’d travelled only once before. Headlights pierced the night, picking out slanting sheets of rain and wet shrubs lining the road. His mind’s eye, however, ran through images of his now very much ex-assistant’s horrified face as words like ‘Sorry’, ‘I didn’t know’ and ‘It was for the best...for the Kyriakou Bank’ stuttered from the man’s lips.
Fury pounded through Dimitri’s veins. How had this happened? How?
In the nineteen months since his release from that godforsaken American prison, he’d sweated blood and tears to try and find the culprit responsible for setting him up to take the fall for one of the most notorious banking frauds of the last decade. Not only that, but also to bring his—his father’s—family-owned bank back to its former glory.
And finally, one month ago, after the arrest of his half-brother, Manos, he’d thought all his troubles had ended. He’d thought he could put everything behind him and focus on the future. He thought he’d be finally able to breathe.
Until he’d received notification of unusual activity on a small personal account he’d not looked at in years. He’d set up the alerts the moment he’d resumed his position on the board of governors and had hoped that he’d never receive one.
But two days ago he had.
And he’d been horrified to discover that, unbeknownst to him, his assistant had arranged payment to a woman who had claimed Dimitri had a daughter. It had happened before, false accusations seeking to capitalise on his sudden unwelcome and erroneous notoriety after his arrest, demands for impossible amounts of money from scam artists. But this time...
Was it some perverse twist of fate that this discovery had coincided with the second leg of the Hanley Cup? That he should be drawn back to Dublin not only for the Winners’ Circle, but also because his assistant had transferred the ridiculous sum of fifty thousand euros to a money-grabbing gold-digger who had—
The sound of his phone ringing cut through his thoughts like a knife.
‘Kyriakou,’ he said into the speaker set in the car.
‘Sir, I have the information you...for...’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s...rush... So I cannot guarantee...disclosure.’
‘You’re breaking up, Michael. The signal out here is terrible,’ Dimitri growled, his frustration with this whole mess increasing. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Yes, sir... Just about.’
‘Look, you can email me the file and I’ll look at it later, but for now, just top-line thoughts will do.’
‘Mary Moore...years old... One daughter—Anna, no father on the...certificate. Arrests for drunk and disorderly...disturbing the peace.’
Dimitri let out a curse. He couldn’t believe it. The woman who had come apart in his arms was a drunk? Had a criminal record? Dammit.
‘Okay. I’ve heard enough. Get me your invoice and I’ll ensure the payment is—’
‘Wait, sir, there’s...you need...’
‘The signal’s breaking up now. I’ll read the full file when I can access emails.’
With that, Dimitri ended the call, not taking his eyes from the road once. If he thought he’d been angry before, it was nothing compared to the fury now burning through his veins. He glanced at the man sitting silently in the passenger seat of the car—the only man outside of the Winners’ Circle he trusted. David Owen had been his lawyer for over eighteen years.
‘Legally, at this moment, there’s actually very little you can do,’ David said without making eye contact. ‘All you have is the request for fifty thousand euros and a grainy black and white photo of a little girl.’
And it had been enough. Enough for Dimitri to recognise that the little girl was his. He’d looked exactly the same at her age—thick, dark, curly hair, and something indescribably haunted about her large brown eyes. Dimitri acknowledged that that might have been fanciful on his part. But surely, with an alcoholic criminal as a mother, that was a given.
‘You have no actual proof that the child is yours.’
‘I don’t need it. I know it. Know that she is my blood. The timing fits, and, Theos, David, you read the email, you saw that picture too.’
David nodded his head reluctantly. ‘We could engage Social Services, but that would cause publicity and scandal.’
‘No. I will not have any more scandal attached to the Kyriakou name. Besides, it would take too long. The reason you’re here is to help me get what I want without any of that. I can’t afford for the press to find out about this yet. The mother is clearly only in it for the money. A little legal jargon will help grease the wheels, so to speak.’
The satnav on his phone told him to take the next left. How on earth Dimitri had found his way to that little bed and breakfast three years before, he had no idea.
‘Are you sure you want to do this? As I said, legally your position is not the strongest.’
‘She lost her right to any legal standing when she tried to blackmail me,’ Dimitri bit out.
How could he have been so deceived? Again? How could he have let that happen?
Throughout his wrongful imprisonment, fourteen months incarcerated and locked behind bars like an animal, he’d held up the memory of that one night, of her, as a shining beacon in the darkness. A moment completely for him, known only to them. He’d lived off the sounds of her pleasure, the cries of ecstasy and that first, single moment—the moment when he’d been shocked, and ever so secretly pleased, to find that she had been a virgin—he’d drawn it deep within him, hugged it to him and allowed it to get him through the worst of the time he’d spent in prison.
Had he been deceived by her innocence? Had she really been a virgin? But even he had to acknowledge that thought as inherently wrong. It may have been the only true thing about Mary Moore. But the rest? She’d lied. She’d kept a secret from him. And she’d live to regret it for the rest of her life. Because nothing would prevent him from claiming his child.
* * *
Anna gasped as the rain pelted down even harder. It snuck beneath the neck of the waterproof jacket she’d slung around her shoulders the moment she got the phone call. She hadn’t had the presence of mind to bring an umbrella though. She dug her hand into the pocket and pulled out the only protection she had with her against the elements. And the irony of that was enough to poke and prod at the miserable situation she was in.
She pulled the large, thin envelope from her pocket and held it over her head as the paper ate up the rain in seconds, and water dripped down her jacket sleeve and arm, to eagerly soak the cotton of her T-shirt.
It didn’t matter if the letter got wet. She knew it word for word by now.
We regret to inform you...owing to late payments...as per the mortgage terms...right to repossess...
She was about to lose the small bed and breakfast she’d inherited from her grandmother, the place where both she and her mother had been born and had grown up. It might never have been the future that she had imagined for herself, but it was the only one she could cling to in order to support her child. How had her mother managed to keep this from her? Mary Moore was barely functioning as it was. But—Anna supposed—that was the beauty of being an alcoholic. Even in her worst state, her mother managed to hide, conceal, lie.
Through the pounding of the rain, Anna could hear the raucous sounds of music and shouts coming from the only building with signs of life on the road. Light bled out from the frosted windows, barely illuminating the wet benches in the courtyard. Anna braced herself for what was guaranteed to be a pretty bloody sight.
She pushed open the door to the pub, and the men at the bar stopped talking and turned to stare. They always stared. The colour of her skin—the only thing her Vietnamese father had left her with after abandoning them before her birth—had always marked her as an outsider, as a reminder of her mother’s shame. She shook out the letter, put the sodden paper back into her pocket and ran a hand through her hair to release the clusters of raindrops still clinging to the fine strands. The smell of warm beer and stale cigarettes defiantly smoked even after the ban hung heavy on the air.
She locked eyes with the owner, who stared back almost insolently.
‘Why did you serve her?’ Anna demanded.
The owner shrugged. ‘She had the money.’ As if in consolation, Eamon nodded in the direction of the snug.
She could hear sniggers coming from the men who had turned their backs to her and anger pooled low in her stomach. It was a hot, fiery thing that moved like a snake and bit like one too.
‘What, you’ve never seen a drunk woman before?’ she demanded of the room.
‘She’s not a woman, she’s a—’
‘Say that word and I’ll—’
‘That’s enough,’ Eamon interrupted, though whether for Anna’s sake or for his peace and quiet, she couldn’t tell.
She stepped through to the snug. Her mother was sitting alone in the empty room, surrounded by round wooden tables. She looked impossibly small, and in front of her, next to a newspaper, was a short glass filled with clear liquid—probably vodka. Anna hoped for vodka; gin always made it harder. She took a seat next to her and pushed down her mounting frustration. Anger never helped this situation.
Mary looked worse than the last time she’d seen her. From the day Amalia was born, Anna knew she couldn’t allow Mary to continue to live with them. She wouldn’t take the risk that her drunken outbursts could harm her daughter. She’d arranged for her mother to live with one of the only family friends Mary Moore had left. And their exchanges ever since had been loaded and painful.