Greek Bachelors: The Ultimate Seduction

The Petrakos Bride

Lynne Graham

One Night...Nine-Month Scandal

Sarah Morgan

One Night To Risk It All

Maisey Yates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

The Petrakos Bride

About the Author

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

One Night...Nine-Month Scandal

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

One Night To Risk It All

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

Copyright

The Petrakos Bride

Lynne Graham

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen romance reader since her teens. She is very happily married to an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, who knocks everything over, a very small terrier, who barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

PROLOGUE

SURROUNDED by fawning celebrity guests and reverential relations at his engagement party, Giannis Petrakos felt as claustrophobic as a lion in a circus ring. His great-grandmother was beckoning him. The old lady was famous for her forthright opinions, and he guessed that she was eager to tell him what she thought of his fiancée. Grim amusement assailed Giannis; as one of the richest men in the world, he had learned to prize the sheer rarity value of such honesty.

Tiny in stature, Dorkas Petrakos settled snapping black eyes on her darkly handsome great-grandson as he towered over her. ‘Krista is a very beautiful young woman. Every man here envies you.’

Giannis inclined his arrogant dark head in acknowledgement of the obvious, and waited for the axe to fall.

‘But what sort of mother will she make for your children?’ Dorkas enquired.

Giannis almost winced, for neither he nor Krista was ready to settle down to that extent. It had never occurred to him to consider his fiancée in the light of her maternal instincts. Perhaps in a few years they would have a child. But if that did not happen Giannis was prepared to choose a suitable successor to inherit his power and fortune from his extensive array of relatives. When it came to reproduction he had not a sentimental bone in his body.

‘You think that doesn’t matter. You think I’m out of date and out of touch,’ the old lady opined, with a hint of aggression. ‘But Krista is vain and selfish.’

His stubborn jawline tensed; such strong censure of his chosen bride was unwelcome. It struck him as unfortunate that just at that moment Krista should once again be visibly revelling in being the centre of attention. His fiancée could not pass a mirror or a camera without striking a pose. Blessed with turquoise eyes and white-blonde hair, Krista, with her stunning beauty, had attracted notice from the instant that she’d strolled into the public eye as a teenager. Heiress to the Spyridou electronics empire, and the only child of doting parents, Krista had been indulged from birth. How could his great-grandmother possibly understand her?

No two women could have had less in common. Born the daughter of a fisherman, Dorkas had grown up in grinding poverty and had held fast to her unpretentious values. Her refusal to conform to the ever more snobbish standards of her descendants and her blunt tongue had ensured that she was widely regarded by them as a social embarrassment. But there had always been a special bond between Dorkas and Giannis, formed most unexpectedly when he’d been a wildly rebellious teenager bent on self-destruction.

‘You say nothing. But if you lost all your money and your fine houses and cars and aeroplanes tomorrow, would Krista still be by your side?’ the old lady asked him drily. ‘I think she’d run so fast you couldn’t catch her!’

As he rose to leave his great-grandmother Giannis almost laughed out loud, for in such a scenario Krista would only be a burden, awash with self-pity and recrimination. She was, undeniably, the product of her rarefied luxury environment. Did Dorkas truly believe that it was possible for him to find a woman impervious to the draw of his fabulous wealth? But the implication that Krista, however affluent in her own right, had an eye to the main chance touched his ego like the sting of a tiny needle sliding below the skin.

With a nod to his security chief, Nemos, to protect his privacy, Giannis strolled out on to the roof terrace. He enjoyed the fresh air while he questioned the bleak edge that had overtaken his mood. After all, he had no doubts about marrying Krista Spyridou. How could he have? Everyone regarded her as the perfect match for him. She had a classy pedigree and she was a terrific hostess. They belonged to the same exclusive world and she understood the rules. No matter what happened there would not be a divorce. In that way the Petrakos power-base of wealth and influence would be protected for another generation.

Yet Giannis did not forget that at nineteen years old, to the horror of his family and hers, he had dated Krista Spyridou and dumped her. The most beautiful girl in the world, he had discovered, seemed to have little else to offer. Indeed, he had decided that she was as cold as charity in bed—and out of it.

‘Please don’t wreck my hair…’ That had been a favourite refrain.

‘I really, really need my beauty sleep…’

‘If you must…’

‘I hate getting sweaty…’

Krista would never set his bedsheets on fire with enthusiasm, Giannis reflected wryly. Her lack of passion had been a deal-breaker when he was an idealistic teenager, powered by Dorkas’s assurance that his perfect woman was out there, just waiting for him to find her. Well, nobody could say he hadn’t looked. In fact, Giannis had packed in more than a decade of riotous womanising before reaching certain cynical and unapologetically selfish conclusions: his perfect woman did not exist. Also, he now saw Krista’s flaws as positives that would ensure his marriage made the minimum possible impact on his lifestyle.

He was used to doing exactly as he liked when he liked. Marriage to Krista wouldn’t change that; she would not cling or inflict unreasonable expectations on him, nor would she throw screaming tantrums demanding attention, love or fidelity. She would never care enough to do so. And what better wife could be found for a workaholic male who thrived on the high-powered pressure of business than a wife happy for him to keep his sexual options open? Krista would be much too busy pampering and clothing her perfect body to feel neglected by her billionaire husband.

As soon as Giannis rejoined the party Krista sped to his side, to beg him to share another photo opportunity. Not an ounce of his impatience showed on his lean, aristocratic face. Although he detested publicity, he was prepared to allow her her way at their engagement celebration.

Relieved by his lack of objection, Krista tucked a hand over his arm and became chatty. ‘Is that horrid old crone in the corner from your tribe or mine?’ she asked with a giggle.

Giannis glanced across the exquisitely furnished room and his eyes stilled on the little old lady dressed in unrelieved black and sitting erect. Horrid old crone? As Dorkas seldom left the island of Libos she was rarely recognised outside the family circle. His brilliant but semi-veiled dark eyes flashed smouldering gold.

‘Why?’

‘She actually asked me if I could cook. Hello!’ Krista rolled her eyes with the supreme scorn of a young woman accustomed to being waited on hand and foot. ‘Then she asked if I would be waiting for you when you got back from the office! As if…’ she mocked. ‘Someone should’ve left that old biddy at home. She embarrassed me. I do hope she won’t be at our wedding.’

‘If she isn’t, I won’t be either.’ His response was smooth as silk.

Giannis watched his fiancée take a few seconds to comprehend what he was telling her. Shaken, Krista gave him an appalled look. Her long manicured nails dug into his sleeve in a panic before he could walk away. ‘Giannis, I—’

‘That old lady is my great-grandmother, and worthy of your deepest respect,’ Giannis delivered with cold emphasis.

Aghast at having offended him, Krista grovelled. To the list of her flaws he added the sins of vulgarity and insincerity.

CHAPTER ONE

IN THE best of moods, and ready for her second day temping at Petrakos Industries, Maddie bounced on to the bathroom scales and stilled to look hopefully down at the gauge. She winced at the reading. Possibly it hadn’t been a good idea to jump on them. She got off again. Shedding her nightdress and her watch, she reset the weighing machine and stepped on as lightly as possible. Disappointingly, the weight was identical.

‘You can’t keep body and soul together on that salad stuff,’ old Mrs Evans who lived on the ground floor had opined, when Maddie had joined her and her daughter for a delicious three-course Sunday lunch, complete with all the trimmings, just a couple of days earlier.

Perhaps the ‘salad stuff’ would have been safer? Or possibly the bar of chocolate she had eaten on the way home from the supermarket the night before had been an over-indulgence too far? Could extra weight go on that fast? In truth, the long hours she worked just to pay the rent raised her healthy appetite to starvation proportions, and she still did not earn enough to eat well. Her despondent green eyes travelled across the expanse of her full-breasted, generous-hipped reflection. Generous mouth tightening, she looped impatient fingers through her torrent of long red hair, then anchored it back with a clip and got dressed at speed.

The black jeans and white blouse had a closer fit than she liked over her opulent curves, and she frowned. When a fire had broken out at her last address she had lost almost everything she possessed. Although she was trying to build up a new wardrobe by buying from charity shops, it wasn’t easy on a low income. As she turned away from the mirror her attention fell on the photo of her late sister by her bed, and she scolded herself for being so precious about her appearance when she was lucky to have her health.

‘Look on the bright side,’ had been her grandmother’s most constant refrain while she was growing up.

‘Every cloud has a silver lining,’ her grandfather had often chipped in with determination.

Yet Maddie and her grandparents had known a lot of heartbreak in their lives. Suzy, Maddie’s beloved twin, had been diagnosed with leukaemia soon after the girls’ eighth birthday. The stress of coping with Suzy’s illness had destroyed their parents’ marriage. Their paternal grandparents had taken charge, supporting Suzy through her gruelling treatment, her period of remission, and finally the last stages of her life. And ultimately it had been Suzy’s fierce determination to get the most out of the time she’d had left that had taught Maddie the importance of hanging on to a cheerful outlook.

As she waited at the bus stop Maddie was struggling to subdue a juvenile tingle of excitement while she wondered if this would be the day she caught a glimpse of the legendary Giannis Petrakos again. Honestly, when she thought about him she felt more like a schoolgirl than a twenty-three-year-old grown-up! It was embarrassing to recall that she had once cherished a newspaper photo of the startlingly handsome Greek shipping tycoon. But she had been a teenager, and she’d developed a hopeless crush on him.

Petrakos Industries was a towering contemporary office block in the City of London. Maddie had never worked anywhere quite so imposing before, and the standards demanded of the staff were equally high. Even though she was only a temp, and generally entrusted with only menial tasks, her lack of qualifications had produced frowns on her first day. As always, she tried to compensate by being very hardworking and enthusiastic. She would have done just about anything to get a permanent job with such a company, because a decent salary would make a big difference to her life.

‘Another five hundred jobs are being moved to Eastern Europe to cut costs,’ a female voice lamented outside the room where Maddie was engaged in inputting onto a computer database. ‘The press will go mental over it—’

‘Petrakos Industries is in the top three most successful companies in the world,’ male tones chipped in reprovingly. ‘Giannis Petrakos may be a ruthless bastard, but he’s invincible in business. Don’t forget that his shark-like instincts are likely to deliver us an even bigger bonus this year.’

‘Do you ever think about anything other than money?’ the woman censured. ‘Petrakos is a super-wealthy guy with about as much human emotion as a piece of granite.’

Maddie was tempted to go to the door and protest that point. But in her guise as an unwilling eavesdropper she knew she could scarcely do so. What was more, while she might long to sing Giannis Petrakos’s praises, it was certainly not her place to talk about his private endeavours. Suppressing a sigh, she returned her attention to the database.

After lunch she and her agency co-worker, Stacy, were sent to the top floor to help out. A brunette manager called Annabel told Stacy that she would be serving refreshments at an afternoon meeting.

‘I’m a temp, not a waitress!’ Stacy declared pugnaciously.

‘Your role as a temp is to do as you are asked,’ Annabel retorted crisply. ‘Petrakos Industries requires a high degree of flexibility from all employees—’

‘I’m not an employee…I’m a temp—and I don’t serve the tea—’

‘Not to worry,’ Maddie slotted in hastily, keen to bring the battle to an end before Stacy argued both of them out of a job. ‘I’ll do it.’

In receipt of that offer, Annabel defrosted only marginally, and angled a pointed look of disapproval at Maddie’s jeans. ‘The company dress code doesn’t allow jeans, but I suppose you’ll have to do.’

‘You should’ve slapped that madam down hard for being so cheeky about your clothes,’ Stacy opined the minute the two girls were alone. ‘You’re doing her a favour.’

Maddie grimaced. ‘It was a fair comment. But with my skirt in the wash I only have jeans left to wear.’

‘I bet she’s just jealous of your looks,’ Stacy contended with scorn. ‘Those men walking out of the lift couldn’t take their eyes off you, and she didn’t like it.’

Maddie went red with embarrassment. ‘I think she was just uptight about the meeting.’

‘You should make the most out of what you’ve got,’ Stacy told her impatiently. ‘With your face and body, I’d be coining it in as a glamour model or a lap dancer.’

Inwardly cringing at the concept of that amount of naked exposure, Maddie said nothing. Sometimes she thought she had been born into the wrong body, for she was very uncomfortable with the masculine notice awakened by her hourglass curves.

As she crouched down to remove a china tea-set from the cupboard where it was stored, Annabel thrust wide the door to issue further instructions. ‘Mr Petrakos will be present at the meeting. When you enter the boardroom, serve the refreshments quietly and quickly.’

Striding past in advance of his personal staff, Giannis caught a glimpse of the redhead just before the boardroom kitchen door flipped shut on her. In that split second a razor-sharp image of her imprinted itself on his brain: bright hair that gleamed like beaten copper and gold against her pale alabaster skin and fell in splendour halfway down her spine; the luscious pout of voluptuous breasts that segued down into an improbably tiny waist and then flared out again into the ripe fullness of a very feminine derrière.

A powerful wave of testosterone-charged response assailed Giannis. He always controlled his sexuality, and he was startled by the heady rush of blood to his groin. He assumed his response was a rude reminder of a private truth: he liked women with a little more flesh than the very slender models who invariably came his way. Even so, that disruptive surge of sexual arousal irritated him, and he banished the image of her from his mind. Most probably, he acknowledged, he just needed a woman.

Taut with nerves at the prospect of finally seeing Giannis Petrakos again, Maddie immediately doubled up the amount of coffee in the flask she was preparing. Very strong and very sweet: that was how he liked it. For just a moment memories took over and she smiled, but she blinked back the tears that were pricking at the back of her eyes.

Under cover of the spirited dialogue taking place round the vast conference table, she eased the trolley into the boardroom and gently closed the door. Only then did she allow herself to look in the direction of the male poised by the windows, and even though she had promised herself that she would simply steal one tiny glance, she was transfixed. In the tailored perfection of a black pinstripe business suit, he looked downright magnificent.

If anything, Maddie conceded rather dizzily, he was even more staggeringly beautiful than when she had first seen him. Nine years had eradicated all trace of the boy from his lean strong face, and his powerful muscular frame had filled out. But he still held his proud dark head at an imperious angle that she instantly recognized, and his eyes were unforgettable. As dark as bitter aloes and set deep below straight ebony brows. His gaze was coolly trained on the current speaker. He had incredible eyes: in certain lights or when he laughed they were the same colour as gilded bronze.

‘Why aren’t you serving?’ someone hissed in her ear.

Maddie unfroze, and jerked as though she had been slapped. As she reached for the first cup and saucer Giannis Petrakos glanced at her, and she stilled again. Her tummy flipped and her heart began to thump, making it hard for her to breathe. For the space of a heartbeat her surroundings vanished. All she was conscious of was the unfamiliar heaviness of her breasts, the dryness of her mouth, and the almost painful little twist of sensation making its presence felt low in her pelvis. She lowered her lashes in an instant of genuine confusion. It shook her that it took an almost physical effort to force her attention back to her task.

Coffee—strong, black, sweet, she reminded herself, while she wondered what on earth had come over her. And then, guessing, she felt a giant wave of shamed pink colour spreading up from her throat all the way over her dismayed face to her hairline. My goodness, she would never dare to look at him again! Dragging in a jerky breath, she poured his coffee, almost absentmindedly added four heaped spoonfuls of sugar, stirred it, and forced her feet in his direction.

Giannis had been bored, but now his ennui had fled. Had he not seen her again, he was sure he would not have thought of her. But her presence a scant twenty feet away put paid to that possibility. In a fluid movement he sat down at the table. Was she a private caterer? Or a member of the caterer’s staff? Looking at her, he speedily lost interest in the finer details of her identity. Although she was decidedly pocket-sized in the height department, she had a gorgeous face, and the lushness of her full pink lips was a fitting match for the striking symmetry of her abundant curves. Her eyes were the colour of the green glass he had collected as a kid from the seashore. His shapely mouth curled as he recalled his exquisite mother’s ridicule at receiving such a childish gift, but when he read the tiny curvaceous redhead’s reverent gaze that unpleasant recollection of his disturbing childhood totally vanished.

Maddie set down his coffee with a hand that was shaking so badly he put out his own to steady her wrist and ensure there was not an accident.

‘Be careful,’ Giannis admonished.

It was only necessary to maintain the contact for seconds, but it was long enough for the faint floral scent of her fair skin to flare his nostrils. And that fast he got hot and hard again. In the startled quick upward glance she gave him he registered just how vulnerable she was. So close to him, she scarcely dared to breathe, and he found that knowledge incredibly exciting. He imagined tugging her down on to his lap, opening the shirt stretched to capacity over her ripe breasts and using his mouth and his hands to toy with the prominent crests that made faint indentations through the fine cotton. The strength of that erotic imagery surprised him, and he suppressed the fantasy with fierce disdain. Since when had he hit on the equivalent of a tea lady? He took a sip of the strong sweet brew in his cup, but the tension in his aroused body stubbornly refused to subside.

Warm all over, and trembling, Maddie backed away. What a clown she felt! What must he think of her for staring at him like that? Naturally he had noticed her gaping at him like a silly schoolgirl. How could he not have? He had braced her wrist with his fingers when he saw the cup wobbling on the saucer and told her off. A sidewise glance reassured her that nobody else appeared to have noticed his intervention, or his reproof. Relieved, but mortified by the poor showing she had made, she mustered her wits and hurried to serve the rest of the table.

‘This coffee is undrinkable,’ a man complained with a grimace, and was speedily backed up by his neighbour.

Consternation assailed Maddie.

‘On the contrary—it’s the first decent coffee I’ve had in this office,’ Giannis said in an impatient tone of dismissal. ‘Let’s get on with the presentation.’

More flustered than ever by the critical comments, Maddie was quick to respond to a harried signal from Annabel Holmes that urged her to speed up the delivery of refreshments. In her eagerness to do that, and to contrive an escape from the conference room, Maddie caught her foot on an exposed wire. Stumbling, she pitched forward on to the carpet, and the laptop computer that had been jerked off the table when she tripped crashed down with her.

For split second there was total silence. Giannis studied the prone redhead with sardonic disbelief. She looked like an exquisite work of art but, being human, she had a fatal flaw: on the move, she was an accident waiting to happen.

‘Why didn’t you look where you were going?’ one of the executives demanded in a tone of anguish.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Maddie gasped, staring in dismay at the computer.

‘The USB memory stick has broken in half,’ the man groaned, crouching down to assess the damage. ‘I’ll have to get another copy of the presentation e-mailed over, sir.’

Raw impatience filled Giannis, because he was on a very tight schedule. Not content with almost scalding him with the coffee, the redhead had just single-handedly wrecked the entire meeting. ‘How could you be so incredibly clumsy?’ he murmured in icy wonderment.

Horrified by the damage she had caused, and devastated by that personal rebuke, Maddie scrambled hurriedly upright and said tautly, ‘I really am sorry, sir. I didn’t see the wire.’

At that moment Giannis wondered what it was about her pale, delicate features that struck an eerie chord of familiarity with him. Whatever—a hint of tears had given her green eyes a soft radiance. An identification tag dangled from her shirt, but Giannis couldn’t read it. He studied her from below the black screen of his dense lashes, his brilliant dark eyes glittering. Her pouting mouth reminded him of a crushed strawberry. ‘And you are…?’ he queried drily.

‘Maddie…er…Madeleine Conway, sir.’ Catching an urgent, dismissive jerk of the head from Annabel, who clearly wanted her to get out, and fast, she retreated back to the trolley and made a hasty exit.

Maddie felt so hot and flustered and furious with herself that she had to splash her face with cold water to cool down. Having actually got to meet Giannis Petrakos, she had contrived to make the worst possible impression on him. Her nerves had made her inexcusably ham-fisted. She winced at the suspicion that he might have seen the involuntary tears of dismay that had briefly filled her eyes when she’d realised the extent of the damage she had caused. How professional was that?

She felt even more uncomfortable about the way she had behaved around him. Being a touch naïve and inexperienced when it came to men now struck her as being a hanging offence. However, she had had little opportunity to be anything else when, from her teenage years right through to her early twenties, she had been restricted by her responsibilities at home. A social life had been impossible, school-friends had fallen away because she had never been free to go out. Though in some ways she had grown up older than her years, because she had spent so much time with her grandparents, when she’d moved to London to find work, after her grandmother had passed away, she had discovered that she was uncomfortably out of step with her peers. Sex as casual as a takeaway meal and heavy drinking ran contrary to the mores she had been taught to respect.

But Maddie was also honest enough to admit that until the moment she had looked across that conference room and seen Giannis Petrakos she had genuinely not known what it was to be strongly attracted to a man. In that instant her brain had turned to mush and her body to an alien entity that reacted with responses she had not known she had. The strength of that physical pull had taken her by surprise, and even in retrospect it shocked her. That disturbing awareness of the more private parts of her body still lingered like a secret taunt, to remind her that she had sexual responses that paid little heed to common sense or self-control. Could he have guessed why she was staring at him? The suspicion made her cringe. While he had to be accustomed to attracting female attention, he was entitled to expect more prudent behaviour from an employee.

‘Miss Conway?’ Annabel Holmes murmured from the doorway. ‘A word, if you please.’

Maddie paled and turned obediently away from the trolley she had been clearing to face the manager.

‘Are you sure you’re all right? That was quite a fall you had,’ the other woman remarked rather stiffly.

‘I’m great—only my dignity dented,’ Maddie asserted awkwardly. ‘Were you able to hold the presentation?’

‘I’m afraid not. There was a delay, and Mr Petrakos had another appointment. He’s never here for long, and when he is his schedule is packed. Mistakes are an inconvenience and an annoyance that he doesn’t forget,’ Annabel breathed tautly. ‘I messed up by asking you to do the refreshments—’

‘No, I’m the one who messed up!’ Maddie protested in dismay.

‘I’m afraid Mr Petrakos has a low tolerance threshold for screw-ups. I’m pretty sure I’ll be forever associated with that ruined presentation in his mind.’

Guilt assailed Maddie in an even more powerful wave. ‘Surely not…I mean, I’m sure he’s a reasonable guy.’

A humourless laugh fell from Annabel’s lips. ‘You’re suffering from the Petrakos effect, aren’t you? All our hearts beat a lot faster the first time or so, but now mine just goes into panic mode when he’s around,’ she confided heavily. ‘He may be drop-dead gorgeous, but he’s cold as ice below the surface and he expects perfection. If you don’t shape up, he ships you out fast.’

Initially ready to argue with that hard assessment of Giannis Petrakos, Maddie bit down on her tongue—because she had already learned for herself that he did not suffer fools in silence. She apologised again, for she could see that the brunette was sincerely worried about her future employment prospects.

Annabel shrugged and told her not to worry about it. ‘That’s the joy of being a temp,’ the other woman added. ‘You’ll be out of here tomorrow and starting a clean sheet someplace else the next day.’

With a heavy heart, Maddie cleared the abandoned cups from the empty conference room. Surely Annabel Holmes was wrong about Giannis Petrakos, and was overreacting to an unfortunate blunder? But some highly successful business magnates were reputed to be total slave-driving tyrants in the office, Maddie acknowledged unhappily. And what did she really know about Giannis Petrakos as an employer? Was the other woman’s career likely to suffer as a result of Maddie’s clumsiness? If that was the case, wasn’t it her duty to speak up on Annabel’s behalf and ensure that she herself took the blame? Grovel in the hope that his memory of the unfortunate incident was forever associated with a very clumsy temp instead?

Tomorrow she would make every possible effort to speak to him. Perhaps when he arrived in the morning—or later—she’d be able to just manage to catch him on his own for a moment. She could always make him a cup of coffee and use that as an excuse to interrupt him. A couple of minutes would be all she needed. It was wonderful how a few well-chosen tactful words could smooth over an awkward episode…

CHAPTER TWO

GIANNIS woke hot and aching from an erotic dream and cursed with rare savagery. Maddie, the graceless little redhead, had hotwired his libido. What was it about her? The lure of forbidden fruit? The prospect of sex at the office? He had never had it, but had often thought about it.

Over the past decade he could have fulfilled that fantasy time and time again. Yet, in spite of the fact that innumerable female staff had made sexual approaches, he had never responded. He had withstood the ones who’d stripped off just as easily as he had rejected the looks, and the verbal and written invitations. In fact all those workplace come-ons had exasperated him, because he was first and foremost a businessman. He was a firm believer in enforcing the rules that kept his staff keen, disciplined, and motivated to deliver only their very best. By no stretch of the imagination could his shagging the temp do anything but damage that streamlined operational efficiency, Giannis told himself grimly.

On the other hand, he mused over breakfast at six, there was no reason why he should not pursue the temp once she had moved on from Petrakos Industries.

In the act of mulling over that fact, and its possibilities, on his chauffeur-driven journey through the London traffic, Giannis got a distinct cold chill down his spine. Why was he thinking about Maddie Conway so much? Why did he even remember her name? It was weird. He was acting weird. Since when had sex been a big deal to him? All his needs in that department were met by two highly sophisticated beauties, one in London and another in Greece. Both understood his requirements to the letter, and met them with the utmost style and discretion.

He set up a meeting over lunch with his English mistress. Obviously he was suffering from sexual frustration.

At noon, Maddie felt a yawn creeping up on her. She had been given a heap of photocopying to do, and it was so tedious that she could have fallen asleep standing up. Stacy’s moans made the chore no more enjoyable.

‘We always get the jobs nobody else wants to do,’ Stacy complained bitterly. ‘Filing or running messages.’

‘I’m not qualified to do much else,’ Maddie responded

‘I honestly think that uppity cow Annabel sat down last night to work out a list of boring stuff to land us with.’ Stacy restocked the photocopier with paper in a series of vicious movements.

Maddie lifted her head as she heard steps on the stairs outside the door. ‘She’s really okay…’ Her voice lost strength and ebbed without her awareness when she focused on the male coming to a halt just outside the door.

Lowering the mobile phone from his ear, Giannis Petrakos glanced casually into the room on his way past, and then came to a momentary halt.

‘Is there anyone you don’t like?’ Stacy was demanding in a tone of irritation, her back turned to the door. ‘It’s not normal to always be saying nice things about everybody.’

Maddie parted her lips to laugh off that response, but no sound came out—because incisive dark, deep-set eyes were surveying her from the doorway. She couldn’t move, couldn’t break that visual connection. A strange sense of exhilaration gripped her. Her heart was racing so fast it seemed to be pounding in her eardrums. Her skin prickled and tightened round her bones. And then he swung away and strode down the corridor, leaving her limp and drained and in shock again. For goodness’ sake, what was wrong with her? He had only looked in her direction for a couple of seconds and she had stared back at him as if she was paralysed! Couldn’t she have at least smiled and acted as if she had more than one brain cell?

She would have liked to tell him that she would never forget how happy he had made her sister, but her grandmother’s gratitude at the time had made him uncomfortable, and not for worlds would she have repeated that mistake. In any case, she acknowledged ruefully, it was most unlikely that after so many years he would even remember her late sister.

‘Hello? ‘Stacy snapped her fingers loudly right in front of Maddie’s face, to recapture her co-worker’s attention. ‘Anybody home?’

In his office, Giannis was engaged in the unfamiliar task of questioning his own actions. His lean, fiercely handsome features were taut with incomprehension. Emerging from the boardroom, he had shaken off his phalanx of support staff and had traversed the entire top floor of Petrakos Industries. He had looked into rooms he had not even known existed. Why? Why had he done that? For the first time in his life he had done something that he did not remember deciding to do, and he had done it for no good reason.

He was exasperated by the suspicion that he might have been prompted by a subconscious desire to see the red-headed temp again. And he was annoyed that her Titian red hair, smooth alabaster skin and full breasts had stood up so well to a second, more critical scrutiny. In fact, dressed in a simple white shirt and a narrow black skirt that could only showcase her dazzling curves, she had looked more ravishing than ever. That acknowledgement seriously rattled him.

He was on the way to his mistress’s apartment when Krista called him.

‘I’ve decided on an Ancient Greek theme for our wedding,’ his fiancée trilled in high excitement. ‘You said you wanted a traditional wedding. What could be more traditional than the ancient gods?’

‘They were pagans,’ Giannis said drily.

‘Who cares about that? Piety is deeply unfashionable. Our wedding will be the society event of the year. You can play Zeus, the king of the gods, and I can be Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty—’

‘According to Homer, Zeus and Aphrodite were father and daughter.’ As Giannis had not the slightest intention of getting tricked out in a tunic and cloak to make a fashion statement out of what he considered to be a private and serious event, he hoped that nobody told her that Adonis had been one of Aphrodite’s many lovers.

Fifteen minutes later, Giannis greeted his English mistress. Sex, he was convinced, would restore him to the cool rationality of his normal self. Over the past twenty-four hours he had become increasingly aware that he was not himself. Not a male given to solemn self-examination, he found himself furiously intolerant of his undisciplined thoughts, disturbed sleep and edgy behaviour.

Unfortunately, the instant he laid eyes on the beautiful blonde model he realised that he no longer found her attractive. All of a sudden, and for no reason that he could understand, she left him stone-cold. What was more, he found himself making an unwelcome comparison between her and Maddie Conway. For a male who functioned on pure logic, such perverse mental ruminations were deeply disturbing. Duly informed that their arrangement had run its course, the blonde accepted the news with good grace, since she was well aware that she would receive a generous financial settlement.

Giannis got back into his limo, having enjoyed neither the release of sexual tension nor the indulgence of an appetising lunch. Even his impatience felt unfamiliar, for his personal life, like his working day, was highly organised and designed to meet his every expectation. He liked the framework of his existence to be predictable. In his choice of Krista as a bride he had left nothing to chance, because he knew that she would never demand more than he was prepared to give. The sole surviving offspring of selfish and irresponsible parents, he took no risks in his private life. He satisfied his high sex drive with the minimum of fuss and emotion and, while he might specialise in the superficial in his relationships, he had never slept around.

In short, lusting after a sexy little red-headed temp at the office was decidedly not his style. She did not share his background or his place in society. She was not even his type—his usual preference was for leggy blondes. Yet her translucent ivory complexion, verdant green eyes and luscious pink mouth had become imprinted on his brain with the efficiency of a rampantly destructive computer virus, Giannis reflected in angry frustration. He was determined to repress such unruly promptings. It would be an act of crass stupidity to seek intimacy with an employee, however temporary. Even if she had looked at him with a wondering air of reverence that, he had to confess, he found stupendously appealing…

By late afternoon, Maddie appreciated that she had little time left in which to seek out Giannis Petrakos and say her piece about the laptop débâcle. In less than an hour she would be leaving the Petrakos building, and tomorrow she would be working someplace else. Having heard Stacy getting her instructions prior to taking over the switchboard, she knew that the Greek tycoon was in his office and that his calls were being diverted. She wasn’t going to get a better chance to speak to him.

Unfortunately, she was stopped during her passage upstairs and sent to pick up some papers from another floor. She had to wait until they were ready, and by the time she delivered them back there were only twenty minutes of her working day left. In the galley kitchen she hastily took out a cup and saucer and made coffee exactly the way Giannis Petrakos liked it.

She moved down the corridor as fast as she dared. She no longer knew if he was even still in the office, and there was no time to find out. Her stomach felt as though it was lodged somewhere near her throat. Balancing the coffee in one hand, she knocked on the door of his office. There was no answer. Afraid that she would be noticed and intercepted before she could see him, she depressed the door handle with a perspiring palm.

‘Can I help you?’ A man the size of a skyscraper had appeared out of nowhere and materialised at her elbow when she’d least expected it. His accent was foreign, his craggy dark face cold. She shot a nervous glance up at him, wondering who he was.

‘I’ve made some coffee for Mr Petrakos. Who are you?’

‘Nemos. I take care of Mr Petrakos’s security.’ The older man rested his attention on her name-tag, and then surprised her by pressing open the door for her entry. ‘Go ahead, Miss Conway.’

The office of the CEO of Petrakos Industries was a vast space, with a strikingly contemporary décor, but it was frustratingly empty. At a loss, Maddie hovered until she heard a slight noise through an open door on the other side of the huge room.

A pulse beating suffocatingly fast in her throat, she went through that door and found herself in a connecting hallway. With a frown, she looked to right and left.

‘Who is it?’ a familiar accented drawl enquired with impatience.

Taut with concern at the suspicion that she might once again be acting as an irritation, Maddie turned to the left to answer his query. ‘I’ve made you coffee, Mr Petrakos…’

One step through that door and Maddie appreciated her mistake, coming to a stricken halt as she realised she had entered some sort of dressing area lined with mirrored closets. Her dismayed gaze whipped over a unit on which a monogrammed silver clothesbrush had been abandoned She realised that a bathroom lay through the communicating door a mere instant before Giannis Petrakos himself strode into view, with his black hair still damp and spiky from the shower. His white shirt was hanging open to display a sleek muscular wedge of brown chest. His feet were bare beneath the hems of his immaculately tailored trousers. Obviously she had interrupted him while he was getting dressed.

‘Oh…oh, my goodness. I’m so s-sorry!’ Maddie stammered in intense mortification.

Taken aback by her appearance, because his bodyguards were highly efficient at protecting his privacy, Giannis surveyed her. He was astonished that she could have bypassed his security team. But, as appreciation of her beauty flamed through him and unleashed an instantaneous sexual response, his aggressive hunting instincts took over. He decided that only fate could have set up such an opportunity. After all, she had entered his private quarters without invitation, and they were alone where no one would dare to disturb him.

‘I thought this was another office…I had no idea.’ Too embarrassed to look directly at him, Maddie was engaged in swiftly backing out again. ‘Please excuse my intrusion.’

‘But you brought coffee? For me? ‘ Giannis treated her to a stunning smile and stretched out a lean brown hand to signify a welcome. ‘How very kind.’

The megawatt impact of that unexpected smile curving his wide sculpted mouth dazzled Maddie. Her tummy executed a back-flip without warning, and all the oxygen in her lungs seemed to vanish. She would not let her attention dip below the level of his angular jaw. She knew she had stuff to say to him, but her memory had suddenly become one giant horrendous blank.

‘Mr Petrakos…excuse me,’ she managed breathlessly.

‘No.’ Giannis was studying her, and discovering that her emerald-green eyes had a breathtaking clarity. He found the contrast between her white skin and copper hair exotic and unusual. Every time he saw her he registered something new to savour.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Maddie was amazingly aware of the appraisal of those intense gilded bronze eyes. While it made her feel self-conscious, she very much liked that visual attention. In fact a whole host of alien sensations were striking her all at once. The most basic was that that lean dark countenance of his had a fatal fascination for her. She stared, and she couldn’t help staring, taking in every individual feature with a fervour she couldn’t deny. The sleek tawny planes of his high, hard cheekbones accentuated the dramatic dark brilliance of his gaze, while his arrogant nose and the rougher shadowed skin round his wilful passionate mouth lent a tough, masculine edge to a face at risk of being hauntingly beautiful.

‘I said no—you are not excused,’ Giannis extended lazily, as he eased the cup and saucer from her paralysed grip and set it down on a polished cabinet. ‘I want you to stay and talk to me.’

‘Talk?’ Maddie echoed in confusion, striving valiantly to recover her concentration. ‘Of course, you want to know what I’m doing in here—’

‘Possibly I’ve already worked that one out,’ Giannis murmured, with the husky amusement of a male accustomed to frequent feminine overtures.

Disconcerted by that reply, Maddie blinked and then coloured. ‘I’m sure you appreciate that it was entirely my fault that the presentation couldn’t be held. I wasn’t looking where I was going—’

Giannis closed a hand over hers, unlacing her taut fingers and spreading them within the hold of his in a calming gesture. ‘You’re very nervous.’

Something like a flock of butterflies had broken loose in Maddie’s tummy. The warmth of his hand on hers, the smooth brush of his fingertips against the sensitive inner skin of her wrist, was making her tingle all over. While surprised by the ease with which he touched her, she was warmed by it as well. Even believing that he meant nothing by that minor intimacy, she found it a challenge to catch her breath. ‘That’s why I tripped yesterday—’

Uninterested in the topic she was striving to follow, and single-minded as always, Giannis shrugged back the cuff of his shirt to reveal his Swiss platinum watch. ‘In ten minutes you will no longer be in my employ,’ he spelt out. ‘Do I have to wait that long to kiss you?’

Her green eyes opened to their widest extent. She was utterly silenced by that question.

‘I would never trouble an employee with unwelcome attention,’ Giannis completed softly.

With a handful of words, spoken with the utmost calm and cool, he had plunged her into shock. Do I have to wait that long to kiss you? He was telling her that he found her attractive, and she was astonished by that concept. He felt the same way she did? A sense of joy followed on that thought, and blew away her usual caution.

‘Madeleine…?’ Giannis prompted, registering his own level of ardour with a faint stab of unease.

Even the way he said her name sent a delicious frisson travelling down Maddie’s taut spinal cord. She was so tense her muscles literally ached. ‘It’s…it’s not unwelcome,’ she heard herself tell him unevenly.

‘I did not think it would be, glikia mou.’

Giannis approached her with the skill of a very experienced male, but beneath the surface he was aware of a pulse of desire that ran much hotter and stronger than he was accustomed to. Off-balance at that suspicion, he saw there was the faintest tremor in the long brown fingers he curved to her narrow shoulder to draw her to him. It was a struggle to master the fierce passion that prompted him to crush her hungrily to his lean, powerful frame. He liked the telling dilation of her pupils and the slight audible catch of breath in her throat when he lifted his hand to undo the clasp at the nape of her neck.

‘My hair…’ she said in surprise as he let the clasp fall. She scarcely knew what she was saying, for she was at such a height of expectation she could barely formulate a single thought, never mind a sensible sentence.

Giannis tugged the silky tangle of long hair round her triangular face, rejoicing in the freedom to do so. The sensual contrast between the wine-red strands and the pearlised perfection of her skin delighted him. ‘It’s magnificent…you should always wear it loose.’

‘It would get in my way,’ she muttered with a nervous laugh.

‘But I want it to get in mine.’ Giannis laced brown fingers into the bright strands and lowered his proud dark head.

Maddie could barely wait for him to kiss her, and her keenness embarrassed her. It did not seem quite nice for her to be so eager, but she couldn’t help it. Deep in her pelvis there was a hard, tight knot of anticipation, and it was a challenge to keep her feet still. Heart racing inside her chest, and barely breathing, she leant almost imperceptibly forward.

When the tip of his tongue traced the full, sultry curve of her lips she shivered. He delved between with a dark, demanding eroticism that flamed through her slim body as efficiently as an arrow hitting a bullseye. Her head swimming, she fought to contain her response. Her slim fingers clenched in on themselves. Her body went rigid even while she was achingly conscious of the stinging heat pinching her nipples tight, of the scratchy and delicious awareness prickling over her entire skin surface. She wanted to grab him but she wouldn’t let herself.

‘I could devour you,’ Giannis growled, his dark golden gaze ablaze as he laced one powerful hand into her tumbling copper hair to tug her head back.

Adrenalin was pounding through her veins like an electric charge. Meeting his eyes, she felt a kind of elation fill her, linked with the charged sense of readiness holding her fast. He buried his hungry, masculine mouth against the delicate skin of her throat, probing and nipping the tender spots with a sure and sensual skill that made her gasp. With his other hand he pressed her into closer connection with his lithe, rock-hard frame. By the time he claimed her ripe pink lips she was on fire for that kiss, craving it. The great wild whoosh of excitement engulfed her like a bonfire.

‘You’re amazing,’ he told her thickly

‘So are you…’ Green eyes bright as stars, Maddie looked up at him, acknowledging the astounding sense of connection she was feeling. It made no sense, but it was there, and her every nerve-ending seemed to be jumping up and down and staging a celebration. She needed his support because she was dizzy, and her legs felt as weak and insubstantial as twigs. Momentarily she recalled the other men who had kissed her. She had never felt anything more than the mildest satisfaction, and more often than not it had been an endurance test in embarrassment.

‘I knew you would be,’ Giannis swore, bending down to push an arm below her hips and haul her up into his arms without any noticeable effort.

Maddie vented her astonishment in a gasp.

When he kissed her again she speared her fingers into his luxuriant black hair and opened her lips to the erotic plunge of his tongue. The world spun in a multi-coloured haze of excitement behind her lowered eyelids. She shivered violently, and his arms tightened round her before he brought her down on a cushioned surface. The surprise of that move made her lashes lift, and she focused in bewilderment on the unfamiliar room and on the bed upon which she lay. Uncertainty and a slight hint of panic made her tense.

Giannis rested fluid tanned fingers along her delicate jawbone to turn her attention to the compelling force of his dark golden gaze instead. ‘I want you, glikia mou.’

‘Yes…’ Although that truth struck her as the most extraordinary thing since time began, she believed him absolutely, and it made her feel incredibly happy and blessed. The hunger etched in every angle of his lean, extravagantly handsome face thrilled her. It unlocked something inside her, blurred all ability to reason, and she acted on instinct when she stretched up and found his beautifully shaped mouth again for herself.

He raised her up and removed her shirt without her even having been aware that it had been unbuttoned. Before she could take fright he locked his urgent mouth to hers again, and unhooked her bra. Unremarked, the garment fell away. An almost inaudible moan was wrenched from low in her throat as the swollen buds of her distended nipples were grazed by the hair-roughened expanse of his hard, muscular chest. With a groan of satisfaction he curved his hands to the voluptuous creamy curves of her breasts.

‘I love your body, glikia mou,’ he growled against her reddened lips.

While she sucked in a panting breath, assailed by a sense of disbelief that such intimacy could possibly be taking place, he cupped the ripe, honey-soft swells and kneaded the lush rose-pink nipples already pouting for his attention. She quivered and gasped in helpless response, her breath rasping in her throat. A pulse of sweet, seductive pleasure began to beat at the heart of her. Such consuming sensuality had never touched her before, and she had no resistance whatsoever.

Giannis looked down into her lovely face with intense appreciation. He liked her lack of guile and affectation. She made sex so simple he was enthralled. Her bemusement, her unhidden surprise at what she was feeling, made him suspect that she might not be anything like as experienced as his usual partners. Unexpectedly he found that conviction the hottest turn-on he’d had in years. He kicked out the little voice at the back of his mind that suggested he should be more circumspect. He had not felt so fiercely aroused since he was a teenager. And she had come to him freely. What harm could there possibly be in taking his pleasure?

‘You’re so beautiful,’ he told her huskily, easing her narrow skirt down below her hips, then casting it aside.

So are you, she longed to tell him, and her face warmed. She trembled, lost in her wondering admiration of him and yet incredibly shy as well. But he brushed her hand away when she made a sudden fumbling attempt to cover the brazen bareness of her breasts. Lest she had any thought of repeating that attempt, he lowered his tousled black head to skilfully entrap a pouting rosy crest between his lips. With a whisk of his tongue he teased the tormented peak to a rigid point of aching need.

Maddie didn’t know what had hit her. Her spine arched up off the bed. Her hips discovered a sinuous beat in tune with the swollen dampness between her legs. He sat up to discard his shirt, and in the midst of the exercise he kissed her fiercely. She was electrified by the erotic feel of his erection against her lower thigh. The barrier of his clothes could not conceal his bold masculine arousal.

‘Feel what you have done to me,’ he rasped, taking her hand and curving her fingers to the blatant bulge of his manhood. ‘I ache for you…’

Surprise and excitement engulfed her as he pushed against her hand with an earthy need that shocked her. But it was a shock that she found insidiously attractive. ‘Giannis…’

He reacted to the sound of his name on her lips by reaching for her again with a savage impatience that thrilled her. ‘I can’t resist you,’ he groaned, pinning her half beneath him to plunder the luscious fullness of her mouth while he scooped up her knees and dexterously skimmed off her panties.

Maddie tensed, suddenly feeling wildly and dangerously naked and vulnerable. What was she doing? What on earth was she doing? A little voice screamed at the back of her head. She might have adored Giannis Petrakos on sight when she was fourteen—but did that mean that the first chance she got she went the whole way with him? Threw away the whole rule book and slept with him?

Long fingers flirted with the feathery Titian curls that covered her feminine mound and she froze, all thought and debate instantly suspended. Her entire body clenched taut with seething anticipation.

‘Take it easy, pedhi mou,’ Giannis urged raggedly, struggling to rein back a hunger that he still found unnervingly strong. But he had a stronger need to live up to the expectant wondering look he had seen in her gaze the day before.

He found the tantalising triangle between her thighs and she shivered helplessly, crazily aware of the tenderness of that secret place. So hot, so damp, so tense she almost physically hurt with longing. Her intense response made her jerk and squirm as he explored the swollen pink folds and stroked the tiny hidden bud, releasing a storm of sensation that made her cry out and gasp. An erotic flood of feeling sent her out of control and took her to the edge of a desperation she had not known existed.

‘I can’t stand it…’ she framed, twisting her head back and forth on the pillow, barely knowing what she was saying while she was entrapped in this world of sensual torment.

Hotter than he had ever been for the ultimate completion, Giannis needed no second invitation. He slid with hard, fluid grace between her slender thighs. With an urgent groan of satisfaction his bold shaft forged a passage into her tight, honeyed channel. At the same instant as he plunged through the fragile barrier of her resisting flesh a startled whimper of pain was dragged from her. Bemused by that slight obstruction, he stilled, uncertain and incredulous, to stare down into her darkened green eyes in question.

‘Theos mou…Madeleine—this cannot be.’

For an instant the real world intruded, and she recoiled from the thoughts threatening at the back of her mind. A dark pulse of voluptuous yearning was still pounding through her unbearably tense body. The simmering heat created by his passionate invasion was firing up again now that the initial discomfort had ebbed. He felt astonishing. She shut her eyes tight, told herself it was far too late to be worrying, and wrapped her arms round him in silent encouragement.

A shudder racked his lithe, powerful body and then he gave way, withdrawing from her only to surge back into her again in even more powerful possession. Excitement electrified her in a seductive wave, and she tilted up to him in sinuous welcome. Control fell away, shattered by the tight coil of pressure in her pelvis that made her crave him like a drug. He slammed back into her, hot and hard. She cried out in delight. Once begun, the delirious pleasure surged higher and higher, and time lost all meaning until finally she reached an explosive physical crescendo. Glorious waves of ecstasy racked her trembling body in ultimate release and she sank into a shell-shocked reverie.

Giannis stroked the vibrant coppery hair back from her smooth white brow. He pressed his mouth there very softly, and then wondered what he was playing at—because he had never been into all that fake, lovey-dovey cuddling stuff. Stung by that awareness, he lifted his handsome dark head again as if he had been burnt. The instant she shifted away from him, however, he automatically pinned her back beneath a hair-roughened powerful thigh. He wanted more of her. More and more and more, he acknowledged in a sensual daze of anticipation.

He had never had sex that amazing. Something that had become a rather boring routine, like a morning shower, had suddenly become full of exciting erotic possibilities again. She was a magnificent discovery. With subtle movements he shifted her across the mattress and covertly kicked aside the sheet so that he could examine it. There was a bloodstain on the linen. She had been a virgin. A one hundred per-cent-genuine virgin.

On one level he was sincerely shocked that he had taken advantage of so inexperienced a girl. On another, he’d hit a total erotic high and felt very smug about the fact that she had surrendered her innocence to him. Not much given to pointless regrets, Giannis suppressed the rare guilt factor and revelled in the erotic high instead. He had found her, he had awakened her…she was all his. He decided not to comment. Why make a big deal of it if she didn’t?

The phone by the bed lit up and vibrated. Giannis answered it. It was Nemos, reminding him that the jet was on standby for his flight to Berlin.

Listening to the swift exchange in Greek, Maddie was depth-charged out of her stasis and fully and fatally restored to awareness again. Consternation gripped her. She was genuinely appalled and confused by what she had allowed to happen between them. Raised by a grandmother who had taught her to believe that it was a woman’s job to set the moral boundaries with a man, she immediately felt that most of the blame had to be hers.

Only as Giannis cast aside the phone did he register a reality that shook him out of his complacency. His ebony brows pleated in displeasure. ‘The condom split.’

Sitting up, desperate to make an escape and already measuring the distance to the door, Maddie froze at that information. She had still to look anywhere near him.

‘Are you using anything that might prevent conception?’ Giannis enquired without expression, picturing the potential impact of such a calamity and barely managing to repress a shudder.

In no fit state to deal with the risk of an accidental pregnancy, Maddie had turned pale as parchment paper. It seemed to her that the punishments for her wanton misconduct were already piling up thick and fast, threatening to bury her alive. What was shame and humiliation in comparison to a life-changing event like conceiving a child?

‘No,’ she muttered tightly.

Giannis noticed that she was as far away from him as she could get and still be in the same bed. ‘I’m sure we’ll be okay. Accidents do happen, but there’s no reason why this one should lead to a disaster.’

‘I’m sure,’ she agreed hastily, but her mortified sense of hurt had deepened. No, she didn’t want to be pregnant either, but his response underscored her cringing belief that she had made the biggest ever fool of herself and acted like a slut. Naturally it would be a disaster if someone like her got into the family way because of someone like him. She reached down to snatch up her shirt, which was lying on the floor, and dug her arms jerkily into it. Her only thought was of flight.

‘Madeleine—’

In frantic haste she was gathering up her discarded apparel, a glow of shamed pink illuminating her downbent face. ‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ she muttered in apologetic interruption, eager to forestall the threatening intimacy of discussing anything with him and to make good her escape. ‘I’ll be totally fine.’

Unaccustomed to being interrupted, Giannis sprang out of bed just as Maddie vanished into the bathroom. The door closed. Elegant brows lifted in surprise, he heard the lock turn.

Behind the door, Maddie was engaged in the act of feverishly reclothing her shivering body. Her hands were all fingers and thumbs and her mind was throwing up distressing images and unwelcome realities. She had just gone to bed with a man she barely knew. And whose fault was that? She had made one mistake after another, right from the moment she had failed to conceal the fact that she found him incredibly attractive. Naturally he had registered that, and was it any wonder that he had got the wrong impression of her? When she’d had the effrontery to enter his inner sanctum with the offer of a coffee he hadn’t asked for, he had interpreted her approach as an invitation. A sexual invitation, she conceded sickly. How could she have been so utterly stupid? An arrestingly handsome and wealthy male must often receive such physical advances—and what young, single guy said no to such an opportunity?

As silently as she could, she released the lock, opened the door and crept out.

Giannis collided with wide green eyes full of dismay, and registered that his continuing presence appeared to be unwelcome to her. As no woman had ever looked at him in that way, he assumed that the impression was misleading. ‘I have a flight to catch.’

‘Of course,’ Maddie mumbled, striving to edge past him.

‘We’ll talk when I get back to London,’ Giannis declared, even while knowing he had not the slightest intention of breaking his lifetime rule of never, ever discussing anything in the way of relationships with a woman.

‘I—’ Before she even knew what she planned to say, long brown fingers framed her flushed cheekbones.

His black hair still enticingly tousled by her clutching fingers, he bent his arrogant dark head and claimed a brief, devouring kiss that momentarily silenced her. ‘I’ll call you,’ he told her with customary casualness.

‘No…no, don’t,’ Maddie countered tightly, her lips tingling and her cheeks burning with colour. She was furious with herself for standing still and accepting that final kiss without so much as an attempt to turn her head away.

Halfway into the bathroom, Giannis paused, frowned, and turned his bold profile back to her, wondering if he had misunderstood.

‘I know you must want to forget this happened,’ Maddie added in an uneasy rush.

‘Not in this case. I’ll be in touch, glikia mou.’ And with that indolent reply, Giannis dealt her a wolfish smile of amusement and headed back into the shower.

His confidence was unshakeable: women always responded to him with eager encouragement. She’d hardly been able to meet his eyes, but her soft mouth had surrendered beneath his in an indisputable response. Had she thought he needed an excuse not to see her again? He almost laughed out loud while he marvelled at her naivety. Possibly she was feeling a little overwhelmed by him, and the swift passage of events. She would get over that sensitive streak soon enough, he reflected with innate cynicism. With his input her ordinary life would, in the near future, change into something very much more stimulating. She would be the starring attraction in his bedroom for quite some time to come…

CHAPTER THREE

EMERGING from the CEO’s office suite into the corridor, Maddie was relieved to discover that the majority of the staff had already gone home. At a fast trot she collected her bag and her jacket, and was about to get into the lift when she was intercepted by Nemos.

‘Mr Petrakos asked me to ensure that you get home safely,’ the Greek security man informed her. ‘A car is waiting downstairs at the side entrance.’

Startled by his appearance, because in spite of his size he moved with remarkable stealth, Maddie was still more dismayed at the unexpected offer of a lift home. An agonised flush blossomed in a betraying burst of scarlet beneath her fair skin. She could not bear to think that anyone else might have guessed what she had so lately been engaged in.

‘No, thank you,’ she gasped in an agitated undertone, and, as Nemos gazed down at her in frank surprise, she hurriedly slid past him and into the lift before the doors could close again and leave her marooned.

Maddie didn’t breathe again until she had left the building. She knew that she would never willingly set foot in Petrakos Industries again. All the way home on the bus she was tormented by the aftermath of shock—regret and self-loathing.

What on earth had possessed her to behave in such a way? To give her body to a guy who was almost a stranger?

Yet Giannis hadn’t felt like a stranger, and it seemed to her that foolish false sense of familiarity had stifled all her wit and common sense. She had behaved like a starstruck groupie, she thought painfully. Nine years had passed since she first laid wondering eyes on Giannis Petrakos. She had been just fourteen years old when he’d visited her sister Suzy in hospital. At the age of twenty-two, when—ironically—he’d been getting loads of bad press for being a wild and womanising hell-raiser, he had been quietly giving considerable time and cash to the cause of terminally sick children.

Born though Giannis had been, into a world of unimaginable wealth and privilege, he had sat down to chat to Suzy as if it had been the most natural thing in the world. When he’d discovered that Suzy idolised the lead vocalist in a famous boy band, he had brought the singer to the hospice where Suzy had spent her final weeks. He’d made her sister’s wildest dreams come true. Suzy had been so thrilled that she had still been talking about that momentous day right up until a few minutes before she died.

Maddie had never forgotten how happy Giannis Petrakos had made her twin. Now she recognised how she had idealised him and begun imagining that she knew him when she did not. She felt she had been too quick to seize on Annabel’s concerns as an excuse to approach Giannis and talk to him alone. Why hadn’t she immediately backed off when she’d realised that he was only semi-clothed? His apparent interest in her had gone to her head like strong spirits. She had not had the strength of will to withstand temptation. And he had been unutterably, wildly tempting. The dulled throb between her slender thighs lingered to remind her of her weakness and her sense of shame increased. Passion had made her betray her values.

Only as Maddie reached her bedsit did she remember the accident with the contraception, and her skin turned clammy with instinctive fear. She could only hope that Giannis would be proved right in his belief that there would be no repercussions in that field. She was appalled at the idea of conceiving after the equivalent of a one-night stand with a male who would regard the development as a calamity. Any child forced to deal with such wounding knowledge of its beginnings would have a right to be disgusted with her. How the mighty have fallen, she reflected, with painful new self-knowledge.

The days passed for Maddie at a painfully slow pace. She was restless, worried and unhappy. The sense of peace she had taken for granted had been replaced by inner turmoil. Nothing that she was feeling was quite what she felt it ought to be, either. Every time her phone sounded she jumped and snatched it up. Either it was a call from the temping agency or from the supermarket where she did weekend shifts. When she finally grasped the fact that she had been waiting to see if Giannis would phone, she was even angrier with herself. It was already painfully clear: she had been bedded and discarded as if she had no more worth than an old newspaper.

The following Saturday morning, however, someone rapped on her door. Looping her tumbling hair back from her face as she answered it, she stilled in astonishment when she recognised that her caller was Giannis’s security chief.

‘Mr Petrakos wants you to join him for lunch,’ Nemos announced with precision. ‘He’ll pick you up in an hour.’

Her delicate brows pleating, Maddie stared up at the big man. It took her a few seconds to absorb that most unexpected message. Not so much a message as a royal summons, she registered, watching Nemos clatter back down the stairs again without even waiting for her response. Evidently there was a strong assumption that nobody ever said no to an invitation from Giannis Petrakos.

Maddie leant back against the door as she closed it. Her knees felt a little wobbly. A giant wave of incredulity was washing over her. He had ignored her existence for the rest of the week and now he was issuing a last-minute offer of a lunch-date on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Naturally she would be leaving it. For a tiny, tiny fraction of a split second she had felt a leap of joy that he had not totally forgotten her existence, but she swiftly crushed that shameful reaction. Where did he get the nerve to act as if she was some servant at his beck and call?

You gave him the nerve, a little inner voice jibed. He hadn’t even had to ask her out to get her into bed. She had been a push-over—a sure thing. Evidently he expected her to drop everything and run the instant he chose to beckon. And why not? She had set no limits and demanded no respect that day at his office. It hurt her to acknowledge it, but she had behaved like a slut. Now he was treating her with a careless, casual indifference to her feelings that could only wound her even more.

Inwardly cringing at the hard lesson she felt she was being taught, she got changed for her shift at the supermarket. Slowly and surely, however, anger was starting to lace her turbulent feelings.

When a knock sounded on the door again, Maddie was ready for it. Before Nemos could even speak, she said tightly, ‘I’m not coming. I don’t want to see your employer again. It’s up to you how you tell him that.’

Disbelief followed by consternation flickered in the older man’s craggy features before he turned on his heel. The depth of her anger dismayed Maddie, for she had always believed that she had the most placid, even-tempered nature. When yet another rap landed on the door, her backbone stiffened and she flung it wide. It was Giannis, and his appearance right there on her doorstep startled her—because she had assumed that Nemos had arrived merely to chauffeur her to some restaurant. Evidently the Greek tycoon had been waiting in his limousine.

Giannis ran his devouring gaze over her lovely face, his attention lingering on her vivid green eyes and the pillowy fullness of her pink mouth. Her lily-white skin and the long curling streamers of crackling Titian hair falling round her shoulders drew him like a magnet. Every time he had relaxed his mental discipline in the past couple of days she had featured in an erotic daydream, and he was not disappointed now, with the reality of her lush, extravagant femininity. Even without couture trappings she was a total babe.

He took immediate advantage of her distracted backward step to press the door wider with a fluid skim of his fingers and stroll in. But he was taken aback by his first view of the poorly furnished, dingy bedsit in which she lived. It had been a long time since he had had contact with such poverty. The chasm between their respective social positions had never been more obvious. But Giannis was where he wanted to be, and it would take the equivalent of an avalanche to send him off course.

Maddie was transfixed by his arrival. He towered over her like a golden Greek god. The pace of her heartbeat rose to a pounding thud in her eardrums. From the ebony darkness of his hair to the gilded bronze of his eyes, set above the smooth, high jut of his stunning cheekbones, he utterly dazzled her. His slate-grey designer suit was the epitome of perfect grooming. He looked devastatingly handsome. He also made her remember the disturbed nights she had endured and the wicked forbidden dreams that constantly replayed the passion she was desperate to forget. Her mortification at the tenor of her thoughts was intense.

‘Nemos declined to explain your non-appearance,’ he proffered lazily.

The rich, dark timbre of his accented drawl snapped Maddie out of her nervous paralysis. Affronted by the acknowledgement that she had been gaping at him like a country hick, she lifted her chin at a challenging angle. ‘What explanation do you need? I don’t want to have lunch with you—’

From the first, Giannis had appreciated her beauty, but her plain speech and lack of affectation had added to her attractions. Now, sensual impatience lanced through him. He found her behaviour incomprehensible when all he wanted to do was get her back into his bed again. He was eager to sate the savage ache of desire that had built up while he was abroad on business.

‘I told you that I didn’t want you to call me,’ Maddie completed doggedly, her hands curling into tense fists by her sides.

‘You also kissed me,’ he countered, brilliant dark eyes lowering with slow, measured provocation to her luscious pink mouth.

Her pale, perfect skin flamed and her silky brown lashes dropped to screen her guilty eyes. ‘That…er…that, like everything else that happened between us, was a mistake—’

‘Nonsense, glikia mou,’ Giannis proclaimed in unapologetic disagreement, his tone of command and conviction as instinctive as his inability to accept defeat.

His cast-iron confidence incensed Maddie. ‘It was a mistake for me!’

Giannis elevated an ebony brow. ‘You have a boyfriend?’

Maddie was insulted that he could think her capable of such a betrayal. ‘No! If I had had, I wouldn’t have behaved as I did with you.’

‘Of course you would have. All women cheat…when a better prospect comes along,’ Giannis incised with immovable cynicism.

Her angry distaste made her stand even straighter. ‘Maybe the kind of women you’re used to mixing with. I am not like that.’

His lean, darkly handsome features turned taut and hard. ‘Perhaps not. After all, you do harbour the distinction of having had me as your first lover.’

That he had registered that she had been a virgin came as a shock to Maddie, and an embarrassing one at that. To have that truth flung in her face hurt, and his insolent attitude could only heighten her regret over their short-lived intimacy.

‘I don’t regard it as a distinction.’ The flame of anger she had been controlling in a forlorn effort to be dignified had been fanned into a blaze. ‘Nor is it a fact I’m likely to want to talk about. No woman would want to boast about having slept with a guy as insensitive as you are!’

Giannis had come into contact with that word ‘insensitive’ before, but it had only been hinted at, or whispered playfully, and at the first suggestion of a frown had been swiftly smoothed over with plenty of sex. Never before had it been flung at his even white teeth. A warning glint of simmering gold entered his usually level black gaze.

‘You’re annoyed that I didn’t phone you,’ he murmured with silken derision. ‘I’m a busy guy, and I make no apology for the fact.’

His very intonation was like a red rag to a bull for Maddie. Every syllable he spoke seemed to touch a raw nerve inside her and she bristled, green eyes brightening to emerald chips above her flushed cheekbones. ‘I suspect that you don’t apologise for very much in life. Obviously people let you get away with being rude and offensive and arrogant—’

‘Don’t forget insensitive,’ Giannis Petrakos purred in helpful addition, while his scorching golden eyes rested on her with raw incredulity. No woman had ever dared to criticise or insult him in such a way. Outraged though he was, he still could not quite believe that she was addressing him with such disrespect.

‘Yes—and that too!’ Maddie gasped, letting anger become the vent for her emotional turmoil. ‘Out of the blue you send an employee to tell me I’m going to have lunch with you…you don’t even bother asking…and then you send him back to pick me up. You act and you talk like you’re doing me a big favour. Are you so used to women falling over themselves to please you that you just assume I’m the same?’

It was exactly what Giannis was accustomed to. But torture would not have persuaded him to own up to the fact. In a graceful movement he shifted closer, invading her personal space with alacrity. He was seething with anger. He curled a purposeful hand to her chin and tipped up her face. His smouldering gaze clashed head-on with her startled upward glance. ‘You gave me good cause, glikia mou,’ he told her, his Greek accent roughening the delivery of every word.

Her nostrils flared at the faint exotic aroma of the designer cologne he used. Locked to his fierce appraisal, she was shocked to feel a pronounced prickle of sexual awareness travelling through her like a contained electric shock. Her nipples pouted and pushed against the lacy cups of her bra and she tensed in dismay. ‘I—’

‘And the invitation is still there in every look you give me—because the sex was fantastic,’ Giannis intoned thickly.

Her memory flung up an explicit image of his lean, powerful body engulfing hers, and the pain of initiation which had been followed by the waves of hot, piercing pleasure. But even as she helplessly responded, as though he had programmed her, she was shocked by his earthy candour. The sex was fantastic. Not exactly a solid base on which to build romantic girlie dreams, she thought painfully.

‘And that’s all you want.’

Giannis anchored a hand briefly in the luxuriant fall of her rippling curls and intoned steadily, ‘I want you. Whatever that entails.’

With a valiant effort Maddie detached herself and pulled back from him, snatching in a gulp of oxygen. She was trembling. ‘For how long?’

Giannis shifted graceful lean brown hands in a speaking gesture that asked how he could possibly answer such a question. Watching him, Maddie felt almost mesmerised by his cool sophistication. He was gorgeous, a powerful and masculine work of art. He was out of her league, though—way out. She had already had a taste of how he would treat her. If this was what he was like when he was keen, what would he be like when her attraction had faded? Pride and her usual common sense began to reassert its sway.

‘It wouldn’t work…it didn’t start out right,’ she muttered tightly

Sardonic amusement lightened his lean bronzed features. ‘Is that the problem? You imagine I might think less of you for matching my passion?’

Maddie shot him an unconvinced glance. ‘You don’t? You mean, you treat all women this way?’

Stung on the raw, Giannis dealt her a fulminating appraisal

But it was wasted on Maddie, who had just realised what time it was and groaned in dismay. ‘Oh, my goodness. I’m going to be late for work!’

‘Work?’ Giannis repeated. ‘You work at the weekend as well?’

‘Yes.’ Snatching up her bag and her overall, Maddie hauled open the door. ‘I have to go,’ she told him feverishly.

Giannis strode out on to the landing and watched her lock up. ‘Where do you work?’

‘In the supermarket down the road.’ Maddie hurried down the stairs at a rattling pace.

‘When do you finish?’

Out on the street, Maddie focused wide-eyed on the opulent black limousine with its tinted windows, and on the number of well-dressed men wearing sunglasses hovering watchfully in its vicinity. The instant Giannis appeared behind her all the men went on visible alert. He was protected everywhere he went. He did not live anything like a normal life. They might as well have been creatures from a different planet, she acknowledged painfully.

‘Madeleine?’ Giannis prompted drily.

‘Six—but what’s that got to do with anything?’ A rueful laugh fell from her lips. ‘Guys like you don’t date shopgirls!’

An hour after she started work the flowers arrived. A glorious bouquet of old-fashioned buttery yellow and cream roses was brought to her. Nobody had ever sent her flowers before, and at first she thought there had been a mistake. The sight of her own name on the gift envelope convinced her, however, and she opened the card.

Personally selected and delivered. See you at six, Giannis.

She laughed at that first assurance, and then her face fell. Even had she been tempted she wasn’t free this evening. But he didn’t quit, and she had always admired that in a man. She thought of what he had done for her dying sister and reminded herself that Giannis Petrakos was very far from being all bad. And she was as much to blame as him for their sexual encounter. Was he right? Was she just angry with him because he hadn’t got in touch sooner? She was being torn in two by conflicting promptings, and she felt horribly confused and out of her depth. His arrogance still infuriated her, and she could not shake free of her guilt at having slept with him. Furthermore he was not trying to conceal the fact that only sexual desire drove his continued interest. That was no basis for a relationship—at least not the kind she wanted and needed. So why was she still tempted by him? Why did the gesture of the roses delight her so much?

Half an hour after she got home, Giannis called back for her.

‘I never even asked you how you got my address,’ she muttered awkwardly, drinking in the sight of his lean bronzed features with strained green eyes.

‘Such information is always available for a favour or a price.’

To Maddie, that was yet another unsavoury glimpse of a world and a way of thought foreign to her principles. ‘Look, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t see you tonight,’ she told him hurriedly, keen to bring the conversation to a swift conclusion.

‘How so?’ he incised, level dark golden eyes pinned to her with questioning force.

There was no apology in Maddie’s quiet voice as she explained that she had agreed to sit with her elderly neighbour so that the lady’s daughter, who looked after her mother full-time, could enjoy a rare evening out.

‘How praiseworthy, glikia mou.’ A wry smile of approval curved his wide stubborn mouth. ‘Naturally I’ll organise a qualified carer to stand in for you.’

‘No, you can’t do that. I never said I would see you tonight, and even if I did want to—which I don’t—I wouldn’t consider letting my friends down at the last minute,’ Maddie declared, her chin coming up at a pugnacious angle because she was indignant at his assumption that she would rearrange her life and her responsibilities to suit him.

But she was even more appalled by her spasm of disappointment that it was not possible for her to consider his offer of providing another companion for her neighbour. She no longer knew what she wanted any more.

Giannis released his breath in a slow, sardonic exhalation. ‘Why do you make such a fuss about trivia?’

Maddie was very tense. ‘When I make a promise to someone it’s not trivial. Mrs Evans would be upset if she was left with a stranger. You are being selfish.’

‘Do not insult me again. I will not tolerate it!’ the tall, powerful Greek interposed, with cold, cutting emphasis.

Maddie paled and focused on the beautiful roses she had arranged in a utilitarian plastic bowl. Her emotions were all over the place and her eyes were suddenly stinging like mad. ‘We’re oil and water—’

‘Between the sheets we’re dynamite.’

A red-hot blush crept up her slender throat and she could not trust herself to look at him. ‘You’ll have to leave. I have to go down to Mrs Evans.’

‘Is this a joke? Or are you wondering how far you can push me?’ Giannis demanded with hauteur. ‘I leave London again tomorrow.’

Reluctantly she lifted her head again, and collided with hot, dark golden eyes that made her tummy lurch as if she had gone down in a lift too fast. ‘It’s not a joke.’

With languorous cool he let his fingers feather through her long, rippling coppery curls. The faint brush of his fingertips against her taut temples sent a quiver through her, and a feeling of sensual paralysis swallowed up all her good intentions. He brought his darkly handsome head down, and her hand seemed to rise of its own volition to glance across one smooth olive cheek and move into the luxuriant thickness of his black hair. It was all the encouragement he needed. He took her mouth in a storm of passionate hunger and pinned her back against the wall with his lithe, powerful body.

‘So what’s this?’ he enquired lethally.

‘Madness,’ she mumbled, stretching up on tiptoe to find the heat and hardness of his mouth again in a fruitless attempt to assuage the painful ache low in her belly.

He sank his hands below her curvaceous behind and lifted her, cradling her easily on his lap as he seated himself on the bed. ‘How long have you got?’ he intoned thickly.

She felt surrounded and controlled by him, and it was incredibly sexy. Her bra was tight over her full breasts, the tender nipples swollen and sensitive. While her body felt weak, her heart was racing with anticipation. She pressed her hot brow against a broad shoulder and wondered frantically what was happening to her. She fought to rescue her self-control. Giannis would take her back to bed if she allowed him to. Was she really that besotted with him?

Maddie was shaken by that inner question, and in a sudden movement of denial scrambled off his long, lean thighs with more haste than grace. ‘We mustn’t…No, absolutely not. Not unless we get to know each other better…’ Her voice petered out as a wave of giddiness momentarily left her head swimming.

Giannis sprang upright in an equally abrupt movement, and swung away to stand by the window. He was fully aroused, hotter than hot. Rampant sexual frustration laced the raw sense of disbelief that held him taut. He was not accustomed to suffering that particular discomfort. He could not remember when a woman had last said no to him. The intensity of his desire for her infuriated him. And now she was laying down pre-conditions. Unexpectedly, the fresh taste of that challenge stimulated him. She had backbone and standards. He liked that.

Maddie braced her hand on the table to steady herself. Raw panic threatened to eat her alive because she had never felt so dizzy before. Dizziness was not something she suffered from, so what was causing it? Oh, dear heaven—was it possible that she could be pregnant? How likely was it that she would get symptoms so soon? She scolded herself for overreacting, but the fear she had kept below the surface of her mind for the past few days was now out in the open. Unfortunately it would be another week before she could put that fear to rest.

‘I’ll be in Morocco mid-week. I have a house in the High Atlas mountains. It’s very private and peaceful,’ Giannis advanced levelly. ‘Why don’t you let me fly you out to join me for a couple of days?’

‘Morocco?’ Maddie was astonished by the invitation.

‘You said you wanted to get to know me, glikia mou.’ Giannis drawled, honey-soft. ‘It would be the perfect opportunity.’

In a decisive movement he set down his personal card on the table. ‘The number of my mobile phone—should you want to contact me.’

CHAPTER FOUR

AS THE helicopter rose in the air at Marrakech-Menara airport, Maddie closed her eyes tight. Unfortunately that exercise made her feel dizzier than ever, and she lifted her lashes and stared woodenly ahead while she prayed that the last leg of her journey would be brief. Maybe she had a problem with her balance? Or perhaps she wasn’t eating sensibly enough? It would be paranoid for her to assume that she was in the early stages of pregnancy. She reminded herself that in just a couple of days she would be able to stop worrying, because she had very regular menstrual cycle.

Maddie had flown out from London first thing that morning. It was now after midday, and hot. The long-sleeved shirt and cotton trousers she had worn to travel were sticking to her damp skin. The cloudless sky was a glorious deep lilac-blue. In a covert movement she pinched her thigh, in the hope that the tiny pain would help her to believe that she had indeed come to Morocco as the personal guest of a Greek billionaire. So far nothing about the trip had felt real, since it bore no resemblance to her only previous venture abroad—a package tour to Spain with her grandmother.

On this occasion, however, Maddie was travelling in amazing style and comfort. Collected from her bedsit by Nemos, she had been the sole passenger on a private jet with a crew who had been almost embarrassingly eager to ensure that she enjoyed the flight. Having watched a terrific film, she had browsed through the morning papers and enjoyed an appetising breakfast while being waited on hand and foot. On landing she had been whisked through official channels at wondrous speed and escorted to a helipad.

Now the helicopter landed, and the merciless ear-battering whine of the propellers finally stilled. Nemos helped Maddie out with care. Initially engaged in adjusting to walking a straight line on solid ground again, she was unprepared for her first sight of the imposing building in front of her. Its sheer size made her stop dead. Soaring ochre walls decorated with geometric patterns were further embellished with slender tapering towers at each corner. Her eyes were wide with astonishment.

‘It looks like a Moorish palace.’

‘It did once belong to the Caid of the Jerid Valley,’ the older man replied. ‘But it was a ruin when Mr Petrakos bought it.’

‘It’s amazing. He must come here a lot.’

‘The boss owns a lot of property. It’s been a while since he was here.’

In the entrance hall, a jade-coloured fountain was playing down into a pool patterned with mosaics. The water was scattered with rose petals. Nemos introduced her to a Berber manservant, Hamid, who appeared to command a very large staff. He addressed her in French. It was a huge building, designed round a central courtyard ornamented with date palms and flowering vines in a lush tangle of greenery. The interior of the house was cool and opulent and impossibly chic. Ancient carved doors, delicate fretwork wooden screens and painted ceilings provided a backdrop for stylish furniture and extravagant comfort. Shown upstairs by two maids, Maddie walked through double doors set in an arch in the shape of a keyhole, and was immediately convinced that she had been transported into the land of an Arabian Nights fantasy.

Across the vast room a sumptuous bed festooned with gold drapes and tassels sat on a dais. ‘My word…’ Maddie whispered in wonderment.

With a youthful air of showmanship, one of the pretty dark-eyed maids tugged back the Indian silk drapes and cast open the tall French windows. A roof terrace stretched beyond, but it was the utterly breathtaking view of a fertile green valley ringed by snow-capped mountains that captivated Maddie. A silver basin was placed for her to wash her hands, and mint tea was served in a dainty glass cup before a light meal was brought.

Maddie wondered nervously when Giannis would arrive. Catching a glimpse of her creased and travel-weary appearance in the mirror above the beautiful mother-of-pearl inlaid chest of drawers, she winced. In the equally large adjoining bathroom, the maid was already running water into a luxurious sunken bath. While she scattered fragrant crystals on the surface, her companion laid out a mountain of snowy white towels. When everything was ready for her, Maddie thanked the girls in her rusty schoolgirl French and closed the door to undress. First she went into the steam shower, where she took a while to get acquainted with the elaborate technology before she could comfortably wash her hair. Then, her wet hair piled on top of her head, she sank into the bath and tried to relax.

In truth, she was as tense as a drawn knife. She did not quite know what had brought her to Morocco. The fact that Giannis had offered her the chance to get to know him just as she had asked? That it would have been downright contrary to refuse such an offer? Or had her decision been influenced by the fear that she might be pregnant? Was that what was making her feel so connected to him? Or was she just lying to herself and making silly excuses in a forlorn effort to avoid facing the embarrassing truth?

From the moment she had seen Giannis Petrakos in his office she had been virtually obsessed by him. The fact that he had once been the unwitting target of her adolescent crush had made her even more susceptible to his vibrant, dark good looks. She had fallen into bed with him because she could not resist him, and she was in Morocco for the same reason. There, she reflected heavily, she was finally being honest with herself. Only being honest made her feel infinitely more vulnerable.

What did she have in common with a guy who owned a palace in Morocco that he rarely visited? Evidently he had as many options in property as he must surely have with women. Where did she fit in? For the first time she was curious about her predecessors. What sort of women did Giannis get involved with? Was she typical? Suddenly she wished she could afford to buy the kind of magazines which featured photos and features on the lifestyles of the very rich. But, curious though she was, she knew that she would not be buying any such publications in the near future. She had taken three days out from working and earning—a decision that would ensure she was living right on the breadline for the next month.

When Maddie emerged from the bathroom in a towel, she was ushered into yet another connecting room, where a smiling English-speaking beautician and her assistant were waiting to offer a bewildering range of treatments. Disconcerted by the situation, Maddie agreed to have a massage because she really didn’t know how to keep on saying no without causing offence. Fragrant rose-scented oils were rubbed into her skin in what ultimately proved to be a wonderfully relaxing experience. She then allowed the talented duo to style her hair and do her nails. Afterwards, she felt amazingly sleepy. Although she could not find her case, a gossamer-light turquoise silk kaftan was draped on the bed. Too weary to go looking for her clothes, she put it on and lay down for a nap.

When Krista Spyridou called Giannis that same day, his jet had stopped off to refuel in Paris.

‘I’ve come up with a new theme for the wedding,’ his fiancée announced happily.

Giannis grimaced.

‘Antony and Cleopatra!’ Krista gushed.

‘What a killer precedent that would be,’ Giannis told her. ‘Anthony and Cleopatra’s marriage was bigamous.’

‘I don’t believe you!’ she wailed. ‘They didn’t show that in the movie I saw.’

‘Anthony already had a Roman wife.’ Impatience gripped Giannis as Krista lamented that news as seriously as if he had just informed her of a death. Had he ever seen her read a book? Discuss anything remotely intelligent? Giannis frowned. She had yawned when he’d taken her to visit an archaeological dig at one of his properties in Athens. The sheer depth of her ignorance was starting to irritate him.

By the time Giannis arrived at his remote fortress hideaway in Morocco the sun was casting arrow-shaped shadows through the intricate window screens. He spoke to Hamid in Arabic. Ascending the winding staircase, he strolled into the master bedroom suite as smoothly as a leopard on the prowl, and came to a halt only when he saw Maddie lying on top of the vast bed. Her flame-coloured hair was streaming like a banner of silk off the pillows, her pale, delicate profile marked by the prominence of her voluptuous pink mouth. Her low neckline exposed the deep cleavage between the snowy white slopes of her full, round breasts. The rich, ripe curve of her bottom strained against the fine silk fabric. The instant rush of blood to his groin almost hurt. He was enthralled by her sex appeal and the intensity of his desire.

‘Maddie…?’ he murmured, using the diminutive for the first time.

Shifting position, Maddie opened her eyes and saw him standing several feet away. Her breath snarled up in her throat. He needed a shave. The shadow of dark stubble over his strong jaw, however, only enhanced the hard masculinity of his lean bronzed features. She raised herself on one elbow. ‘I must’ve fallen asleep.’

Giannis took off his gold silk-lined jacket and tossed it on a chair with easy grace. ‘I was held up in Paris…my apologies. But it’s wonderful to find you here waiting for me, glikia mou.’

For a split second Maddie didn’t quite follow his meaning, and then his confident path round the very grand and elegant room pitched her brain back into gear. ‘This is your room…er…your bed?’

A wolfish smile slashed his wide stubborn mouth. ‘You sound like Goldilocks.’

Her colour heightened because she felt very foolish. ‘I didn’t realise. I should’ve guessed.’

The gilded bronze brilliance of his gaze glinted below his dense black lashes. ‘Don’t tell me I’ve flown halfway round the world to be exiled to a guest suite?’

Picking up on that measured tone of male disbelief, Maddie scrambled up on her knees, anxious to take the heat out of the situation. ‘No, I’ll use a guestroom—’

‘Over my dead body,’ Giannis incised without hesitation, when she dared to float that proposition. ‘You stay. We share. At the very least I will hold you in my arms through the night.’

‘But I thought—’

His stubborn jawline clenched. ‘And I thought otherwise,’ he cut in with ruthless purpose. ‘So we must compromise. I’m a very physical guy, and it is possible that you are asking me to be something I can’t.’

Although her face was hot, Maddie breathed in very deep and looked levelly back at him. ‘You have such a forceful personality,’ she told him gently. ‘But I’m sure you don’t mean to put pressure on me.’

The silence simmered like a cauldron on the boil. An almost imperceptible rise of dark blood warmed the imperious slant of Giannis Petrakos’s classic cheekbones. ‘Naturally not.’

‘Of course, if you feel I’ve come out here on false pretences, ‘Maddie added uncomfortably, ‘I’ll understand if you think I should leave.’

It was a very rare experience for Giannis, but that unexpected suggestion totally silenced him. She was not voicing her offer as a threat that he could condemn as sexual blackmail. She appeared genuinely awkward and unhappy, and that contrived to touch both his strong pride and his sense of honour. He was too macho a man to like the suggestion that he might use his potent strength of character to ride rough-shod over her reservations about sleeping with him again. Irritated though he was, he was still not prepared to let her go and replace her with a more sycophantic female. Madeleine Conway had haunted his thoughts for the best part of an incredibly frustrating week, and the past few days had only been rendered bearable by the knowledge that she would be waiting for him in Morocco.

‘Ohi…no, that will not be necessary,’ Giannis conceded in a driven undertone, his lapse into his native Greek an indicator of his more volatile mood.

‘I don’t want to leave…this is the most fabulous place,’ Maddie confided, glancing up at him from beneath her silky lashes.

The shy provocation of that single glance sent hunger pounding through his lithe, powerful frame. He sank down on the edge of the bed and crushed her lush pink lips under his, his tongue ravishing the tender reaches of her mouth with a carnal skill that made her shake in the strong circle of his arms. ‘Why are you making me wait?’ he ground out thickly. ‘I ache for you.’

Her shapely body was rigid with tension. Her nipples were stiff straining buds that she was afraid were visible beneath the thin silk bodice of the kaftan. She decided that she really did need to get into a less provocative outfit. In an abrupt move that took him by surprise, she slid off the bed. ‘I should get dressed now.’

Quick to surmise that she intended to cover as much of her wondrous hourglass shape as possible, away from his appreciative gaze, Giannis entrapped her hand in his larger one to prevent her from moving away. Instinct warned him that she was skittish, and it was not the moment to tell her that the dressing room would be packed tight with the generous array of designer apparel he had ordered for her enjoyment. ‘No. Don’t change. You look relaxed, and that’s one of the things I like about you. You don’t fuss about your hair, or your face, or your clothes. We’ll have dinner on the terrace.’

Maddie had neither expected nor received anything much in the way of praise in her life. What she hadn’t known she hadn’t missed. When she was a child, circumstances had made her more of a bystander than a main player, and even after she had grown up other people’s needs had continued to take precedence. That single compliment from Giannis had a quite disproportionate effect on her, and gave her a warm squishy feeling inside. One of the things I like about you. At that moment, even if she had been wearing a bin-bag, she would have stayed dressed in it for his benefit. And, had she had sufficient nerve, she would have made him list every single other tiny thing he liked about her.

Giannis swept up the house phone and spoke in a foreign language. Tossing it aside again, he began peeling off his shirt. ‘I need a shower.’

Her attention locked on his bare bronzed shoulders and his powerful hair-roughened chest. When he stretched muscles rippled below his tawny skin, and her gaze was drawn down to the hard taut slab of his flat stomach. She had never looked at a man like that before, had never even been tempted, but she found it exceedingly difficult to drag her regard from him. Her palms tingled in recollection of the satin smooth feel of his damp back beneath her fingers.

Giannis caught her looking at him and recognised her rapt appreciation for what it was. ‘Theos…little fraud, you are as hungry for me as I am for you!’

Wildly embarrassed, Maddie flushed to the roots of her hair and parted her lips to protest the point. How had he guessed? How could he possibly have known what she was thinking about?

‘Deny it at your peril,’ Giannis warned in a husky tone of intimacy that sent tiny quivers coursing down her sensitive spine. ‘And don’t forget that you can’t get closer to me by denying us both the natural expression of our desire.’

Having made that lethal point, he left her alone. The instant he vanished she wanted him back within view again. Her natural caution tried to kick in, but it fought a losing battle against the truth that she was simply happy. Happy to be in Morocco, downright ecstatic to be with Giannis. For a moment the strength of those new feelings scared her, and then she gave herself a firm little mental shake. So what if she was no longer the very sensible and calm young woman she had always believed herself to be? If she got hurt, she got hurt. Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, she told herself with determined cheer.

Her feet shod in the light embroidered slippers she’d discovered by the bed, Maddie went out to the sun-baked terrace. The heat of the day was now ebbing. A great stained glass dome of rich jewelled colours formalised a shaded seating area that was furnished with sumptuous sofas and a marble table already set with fine porcelain and crystal. Offered a drink by Hamid, she opted for fruit juice and curled up on an opulent cushioned couch to catch up with a newspaper article she had begun reading on her flight.

‘What are you reading about?’

Black hair still spiky from the shower, Giannis was strolling towards her in tailored cream chinos and an open-necked striped shirt.

Maddie named a British politician who had been caught cheating on his long-suffering wife for the second time in as many months. ‘I hope his wife chucks him out.’ Shaking her bright head, she sighed, ‘Infidelity is so sleazy.’

Lean, darkly handsome face uninformative, Giannis came to a slow halt. ‘Not always.’

‘You can’t mean that.’ Maddie was taken aback by his response, for it was a subject she felt strongly about. ‘Look at all the lies and deception that go hand in hand with infidelity. It causes so much misery. Just imagine what that man’s poor wife and teenage children must be going through right now—’

‘It is regrettable,’ Giannis pronounced flatly.

‘It’s more than regrettable,’ Maddie stressed, jumping to her feet. ‘It’s wrong! My mother cheated on my father with his best friend. It totally destroyed Dad. I would never betray anyone’s trust. Honesty is always the best policy, and loyalty means a great deal to me.’

Lush black lashes screened his brilliant dark eyes to a cool glimmer. ‘I can see that.’

‘If you weren’t single, believe me, I wouldn’t be here,’ Maddie added, keen to draw a stronger response from him.

Hamid was hovering with the first course. Mastering his stark disconcertion at what he had just discovered, Giannis waved the manservant forward and urged Maddie to sit down again. A procession of dishes was brought to the table while Giannis reappraised the situation. Maddie didn’t know he was engaged.

He had simply assumed that the whole world knew he was engaged to Krista Spyridou. His fiancée had certainly gone to extraordinary lengths to publicise their engagement. A Greek television channel had even made a reality documentary about the couple, full of truly cringe-worthy stuff that had been shown round half the world. But Maddie had no idea whatsoever.

Of course he would have to tell her, Giannis acknowledged grimly. Right at that very moment, however, it struck him as a likely case of suicidally bad timing. Just after she got down from her fidelity soapbox was not the perfect opportunity to announce that he was engaged to be married to another woman. Particularly when Maddie had already slept with him. Particularly when he was fully committed to the goal of persuading her that she could have a terrific future as his mistress.

‘Your take on morals is young and idealistic,’ Giannis remarked lazily. ‘My great-grandmother would be in firm agreement with you, but then she’s over ninety years old and her values are etched in solid stone.’

Maddie tilted her chin. ‘I suppose I am a little old-fashioned, but time and experience won’t alter my views,’ she replied. ‘What’s the rest of your family like?’

His lean, strong face shuttered. ‘I have an enormous tribe of relations.’

‘You are so lucky.’ Maddie tucked into her food with an appetite and enthusiasm that brought a reluctant smile to his sardonic mouth. He was accustomed to women who barely ate in his presence. ‘I’ve got nobody close left, and I really miss having a family.’

Giannis watched her thank the serving staff. She was a very beautiful but essentially ordinary girl, with an extraordinary amount of personal warmth and charm. Was it her very ordinariness that attracted him? Was that the novelty that, against all the odds, kept him coming back for more? In bed she was red-hot. That was what made her so essential to his comfort, he decided with a sense of relief. It was just sex—and why not? She might not fit into his world, but he wanted her there, and what he wanted he would have. Whatever it took, whatever it cost.

Coloured glass lanterns glowed as the sun went down in a sky shot with a wonderful rainbow of colours. He entertained her with the story of how he had stumbled on the ruined Casbah when he was a teenager on a mountain-climbing expedition with friends. ‘My every wrong move was making global headlines that year. I thought this would make a great secret location for wild weekend parties.’

Maddie blinked. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Partying was a serious part of my upbringing. My parents never did anything that didn’t amuse them.’ Giannis was amused by her consternation. ‘On my second visit with the architect, the local headman invited me to visit his village across the valley. The people were very poor. They needed the employment I could provide, but the wild parties would have made it impossible for most of them to work for me.’

‘So you decided not to have the parties?’

‘I got into extreme sports instead,’ he murmured, with a casual shrug of dismissal. ‘Much healthier.’

But Maddie gave him a huge smile, because she was finally catching a glimpse of the guy who had made it his mission to ensure that her dying sister’s teenage dream came true. She knew that some day she would tell him about that, and identify herself, but right then she didn’t want to open a sad subject. Nor did she want to figure in his mind as the grateful and admiring adolescent whom he hadn’t even noticed at the time.

A light breeze feathered through the silk kaftan she wore and she shivered, surprised by how much the temperature seemed to have dropped. ‘It’s getting chilly out here.’

‘Desert nights are cold in the spring.’ Giannis closed his hand over hers to urge her back indoors.

One step inside the softly lit bedroom, she decided that she wanted to share the bed with him in every sense of the word. It was too late to be taking fright and trying to turn the clock back, she reasoned frantically, engaged in a last-ditch battle with her misgivings. What was the point of raising such an artificial barrier between them? Was it even honest or fair, when she too longed to experience that intimacy again?

Her bright copper head downbent, she stilled and plucked abstractedly at one of the handmade buttons on his shirt. Sudden shyness almost overpowered her; it was a challenge to ask him to make love to her when he had been so circumspect throughout the evening.

‘I don’t need to wait any more,’ she said finally, wincing at herself even as she spoke.

On a high at that unexpected declaration, Giannis startled her by reaching down and sweeping her right off her feet and up into his strong arms. ‘I will spend the next twenty-four hours in bed with you, pedhi mou!’

‘Go easy,’ she urged in embarrassment. ‘Be careful—’

‘Careful?’ Brilliant golden eyes collided with hers, his luxuriant black lashes lifting in a request for her to expand on her meaning.

‘The accident with the contraception,’ she reminded him uneasily.

‘A once-in-a-lifetime event. Surely you’re not still worrying about that?’ Giannis censured, with the supreme confidence of a male who took it for granted that life always went his way. ‘Are you late?’

‘No…but—’

‘You’ll be okay. Don’t look for trouble.’ He lowered her down onto the bed with a slow-burning smile that convinced her that her worries were quite unnecessary.

CHAPTER FIVE

GIANNIS threaded his lean brown fingers through Maddie’s tumbling auburn tresses to tug her head back. His hot golden gaze connected with hers on a shaft of pure sensual force.

‘I promise that you won’t regret choosing to be with me,’ he breathed thickly. ‘I will give you a life such as you have never dreamt of.’

‘But I don’t need you to give me anything.’ Even as Maddie declared that she was wondering what he meant, but just then she found that she could not concentrate. Other much more physical responses were taking over.

Giannis began to flip loose the tiny pearl buttons on the bodice of her kaftan. Her breath shortened in her throat. Her breasts ached, the soft pink peaks tensing into protruding points. Between her thighs she felt a tiny pulse flicker and throb into being, and she stiffened, instinctively ashamed of the depth of her wanton craving.

‘I hope you have no objection to the gift of pleasure?’ Giannis teased, fiercely aroused and rejoicing in her explosive effect on his libido.

‘Pleasure’s f-fine,’ she stammered, as he folded back the parted edges of the kaftan fabric and exposed the burgeoning swell of her creamy rose-tipped breasts.

‘As tender as velvet.’ His voice was hoarse as he chafed her sensitive nipples between finger and thumb. With a groan of satisfaction, he cupped her lush, full breasts and lowered his dark head to suckle the swollen crests. Pleasure engulfed her in a drenching wave, extracting whimpers of formless sound from her parted lips.

In a fluid movement he leant back from her and pulled off his shirt, springing upright to remove his trousers. Her heart racing, a languorous weakness gripping her limbs, she lay back against the pillows, watching him. His chinos hit the rug. She was madly curious, and she couldn’t stop looking. He was as confident in his own naked skin as he was in a business suit. And that sleek self-assurance was as sexy as the appeal of his strong, hard body. He discarded his boxers and strolled back to the bed. The bold length of his virile masculinity made her gulp.

Enjoying the wide-eyed visual appraisal she was trying so hard and unsuccessfully to hide, Giannis dealt her a wolfish grin. ‘Do I meet your expectations?’

‘Who am I supposed to compare you to?’ Maddie riposted, hot-cheeked.

The aggressive strength of will that powered the continual expansion of his massive business empire hardened his lean strong face. ‘No other man. You belong with me now.’

‘Women don’t belong to men in this century.’

‘Would you feel right doing this with someone else?’ Giannis enquired, sliding deft hands below her hips and tugging her kaftan off.

She was caught between dismay at that concept and self-consciousness at her nudity. ‘No, of course not. But—’

‘You take my point so beautifully, glikia mou.’ Giannis leant hungrily over her to taste her luscious mouth.

He used his tongue to make a darting foray between her lips, and a snaking spasm of response clenched low in her pelvis. He buried his expert mouth in the hollow beneath her collarbone before lowering his head to let his teeth graze her distended nipples. A low gasp broke from her. Her skin dampened. A delicious yearning was drumming up the honeyed heat at the secret heart of her. Her fingers curved round a smooth brown shoulder, and when he slid up level with her again she explored the solid muscular wall of his chest, traced the silky furrow of hair that led down to his straining sex.

‘Show me what you like,’ she whispered unevenly.

Giannis told her in the most succinct terms, and took great pleasure in offering guidance. She devoted herself to the new learning experience with an innocent enthusiasm that forced him to conclude the exercise much faster than he had anticipated. Groaning as he fought to reinstate control, he kissed her with devouring hunger. ‘You almost pushed me over the edge, pedhi mou.’

Making love to him had heightened her desire, and her level of frustration. She quivered in the shelter of his arms, madly aware of the tingling burn of emptiness between her slender thighs. When he sought out the damp heat of that tender triangle, she gritted her teeth to hold back a cry. Her longing was so intense she pressed her face into his shoulder, drinking in the achingly familiar scent of his skin. He shifted, parting her legs to stroke the delicate pink softness of her lush femininity. He rubbed the little pearl of sensation and she moaned and shivered. As the tormenting heat rose, her hips shifted back and forth on the mattress. Paying no heed to her protests, he employed his mouth with skilful eroticism on her squirming body.

‘Giannis…please…’

‘If you can still talk, you’re not enjoying yourself enough.’

That intimacy was a sweet torment which drove her out of her mind with delight. Wild waves of desperate hunger controlled her. The pressure in her pelvis built and built. She was so hot she was melting, and at the instant where irresistible sensation became sensual torture a shattering climax convulsed her and she abandoned herself to the ecstasy.

Giannis wasted no time in rearranging her limp body and forging a bold passage into her sensitised flesh. He took her with ruthless precision, and she cried out in feverish response. He deepened his penetration, tipping her back at an angle demanding that she take all of him. Frantic excitement enveloped her. His every powerful movement sent ripples of delirious pleasure coursing through her responsive body. He pounded into her with sure, fast strokes. What she had not known could happen again took her a second time, and the frenzied rise of her passionate response swept her to another electrifying orgasm.

‘You enthral me, pedhi mou.’ Giannis rolled back from her and gently straightened her out. He carried her nerveless fingers to his mouth and kissed them. ‘That was wonderful.’

Every muscle ached. Her body almost hurt in the aftermath of that huge, demanding flood of pleasure. The air-conditioning was chilling the perspiration from her body and she shivered.

‘Cold?’ Giannis questioned

‘Silly, isn’t it?’ Maddie muttered.

Giannis didn’t like this constraint. It wasn’t what he had anticipated from her. He had thought that she might well fall in love with him. He had half expected her to cling to him with naïve affection, and he had braced himself to tolerate being hugged. But not only had she made no such move, she was also disturbingly quiet. Perhaps she felt unappreciated? he reasoned. As it was his experience that his lovers always expected gifts, he thought that it was now time to show her the designer wardrobe he had ordered for her.

‘I’ll get you something to put on.’ Giannis sprang off the bed.

‘I didn’t bring a wrap.’ Maddie wished she dared suggest that greater proximity would soon warm her up again—he put out sufficient body heat to power an apartment block. In truth, a terrible uncertainty was threatening to claim her again. Now that their one-night stand had turned into an affair, she realised that she didn’t know how to go about conducting one. She wanted reassurance that what they had wasn’t a casual thing, on his terms, but she knew she was being too needy, looking for too much too soon. There was no way she could risk such questions.

Giannis strolled into the dressing room and rolled back the doors. ‘Come here…I want to show you something.’

Maddie lifted his discarded shirt and held it against her in an effort to cover the expanse of her own bare skin. Wondering what the heck he could want to show her, she came to an awkward halt in the doorway.

‘All the clothes in here are yours.’

Her delicate brows pleated in confusion. ‘How can they be mine?’

Giannis shrugged. ‘This is my gift to you. Staff will be standing by tomorrow, to alter anything that doesn’t fit.’

Stunned by what he was telling her, Maddie tugged open a drawer and skated a doubtful fingertip over silk and lace lingerie. How dared he buy her underwear? Her small white teeth gritted. She stared at the garments hanging in the closet, noting a very famous designer label and sliding the items along the rail to examine another couple, before drawing back her hands as though she had been stung by a wasp. Mortified colour had washed into her cheeks.

‘I can’t believe that you think it’s okay to do something like this,’ she told him tightly, threading her arms into the sleeves of his shirt, because she now felt foolish naked. ‘I may not own any fancy clothes, but that doesn’t mean I want you to buy them for me!’

‘My only motivation was to please you.’

‘Did you pick them out personally?’ she asked abruptly.

In the act of pulling out a pair of jeans from the other side of the dressing room, Giannis tensed, recalling another débâcle when he had sent Nemos to her door to organise lunch. ‘No.’

‘Did you describe what you wanted?’

‘I may have mentioned a favourite colour or two.’

‘Mine or yours?’

‘I don’t know yours,’ he was forced to admit, his handsome mouth taut with impatience. He zipped the jeans. What was her problem? Why couldn’t she be grateful, as so many other women had been before her? Why was she so outrageously difficult to please?

‘Which really says it all, doesn’t it?’ Maddie snapped. ‘You don’t know my favourite colours and you don’t really care either. You want to dress me up like a fashion doll for your benefit, not mine.’

His dark golden eyes simmered. ‘That is untrue.’

‘If you don’t like me as I am, tough!’ Maddie flung at him, her generous mouth curling with pained defiance. ‘And at least have the sensitivity to appreciate that spending thousands and thousands of pounds on someone like me, just because you’ve slept with them, gives a very insulting message!’

That concluding crack made Giannis furious. Slashing his hands through the air in a striking gesture of exasperation, he strode back into the bedroom. ‘So we’re back to the missing sensitivity gene?’

‘I do not need to be reminded that you’re richer than sin.’

‘Stop talking as though my wealth is a serious flaw,’ Giannis sliced back with sardonic bite.

‘But it is…can’t you see that? It’s a barrier between us. I’m not a hooker you need to pay—but that’s how you’re making me feel! ‘

‘Theos mou… You’re such a diva!’ Giannis condemned, colder than ice. ‘A gift is not an insult, and it should be accepted with grace. I’m a generous man and your attitude is offensive. You have no idea of how to behave. And, by the way, no hooker would make as little effort to please as you do!’

His censure cut deep. Tears prickled and stung the backs of her eyes, for she was not in the habit of staging violent arguments—nor had she ever been told before that she lacked manners. She shrank inside his shirt. But she still felt it would be wrong to accept that vast collection of shockingly expensive clothes. She wasn’t a hired entertainer. Wearing garments purchased by him would only serve to increase her sense of inequality. But maybe if she wore his gifts to mask that big financial difference he would feel more comfortable with her? a little inner voice suggested. So who was right…and who was wrong?

Her head buzzing with conflicting thoughts, she walked out on to the roof terrace. Chilled by the night air, she curled up in a heap on a couch. A few minutes later a maid came out, to offer her an opulent cashmere rug.

Giannis watched from the bedroom while Maddie wrapped herself up in the rug he’d had sent out to her. His strong jawline clenched. Nobody else argued with him—and never, ever a woman. What made her so feisty? So critical of him? She was annoying the hell out of him.

In one of the lightning-fast decisions that made him so formidable an opponent in the business world, Giannis rammed the French windows back from his path and went outside. In the light from the coloured glass lanterns her green eyes shone with the clarity of jewels. Without hesitation—for he was determined to overcome any objections—Giannis bent down, scooped her up, complete with rug, and went back indoors with her again.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ Maddie squealed in disconcertion.

Settling her back on the bed, Giannis followed her down in one lithe movement. Bare-chested, long powerful legs clad only in well-worn faded jeans, he stared down at her in mocking challenge. ‘What do you think?’

‘You said I’d no manners—’

Long brown fingers shaped her high cheekbones. Fierce dark golden eyes assailed hers. ‘I thought you’d be thrilled with a new wardrobe.’

Her soft mouth down-curved; her long brown lashes dipped. ‘I’m sorry…I didn’t think of it from your point of view.’

‘Or I from yours. You’re different from other women. But that’s why I want you so much. ‘ Giannis let his wide sensual mouth drift down on hers like a caress.

As the kiss deepened the hot, hungry taste of his urgency intoxicated her. The feverish thoughts tugging her in different directions subsided. Liquid warmth uncoiled in her belly. His long, powerful body came down on hers, acquainting her with the deliciously aggressive thrust of his erection. A helpless frisson of response rippled through her and centred on the ache stirring in her pelvis. Suddenly she wanted him again, with the most shocking ferocity…

The following day, Maddie stirred drowsily and sent a seeking hand across the bed for Giannis. Finding only empty space, she opened her eyes. The bathroom door wasn’t quite closed, and she could hear the thump of water on tiles: he was in the shower. She peered at her watch with a softened smile. It was four in the afternoon.

Earlier that day Giannis had flown her to Marrakech, for breakfast in a fabulous old hotel, before taking her for a visit to the souks. Momentarily her face clouded. She’d had to struggle to hide the fact that the strong, aromatic scents of the spice market had made her feel nauseous. She suppressed the lingering stab of concern, since she could not help but be influenced by Giannis’s sublime conviction that their contraceptive mishap would have no consequences. They had returned to his mountain hideaway for lunch on the almond terrace, where they had sat beneath trees weighed down with exquisite clouds of spring blossom. Long before the final course arrived they had left the table to make love again.

His mobile phone buzzed on the bedside cabinet. She had noticed that he never missed a call. After a moment’s hesitation she reached out and answered it. A flood of words in another language made her appreciate the pointlessness of her attempt to be helpful.

‘I’m sorry…can I help you?’ she asked in apologetic English.

‘Who are you? Some little secretary bird?’ the female demanded haughtily. ‘Put me on to my fiancé.’

Maddie frowned in confusion. ‘Your fiancé? Who do I say is calling?’

‘Krista. Who else?’ the woman responded with withering scorn. ‘Hurry up…I haven’t got all day!’

Maddie set the phone down with a weak hand. She discovered that she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She was as winded as though she had been punched in the gut. It had to be some misunderstanding. Or perhaps the woman had been joking, or lying for some reason best known to her? What the heck was she imagining? That Giannis would deceive her to that extent? That she could be so foolish? She realised with a sinking heart that she had never actually asked him if there was anyone else in his life. But he knew that she believed he was single, she reminded herself frantically, thinking back to their conversation the night before.

Sliding out of bed, she reached for the turquoise kaftan she had been using as a dressing gown. As she pulled it on with clumsy hands she heard an angry burst of speech from the phone she had laid down.

Giannis appeared with a towel twisted round his lean brown hips. She pointed at the receiver. ‘Krista’s on the phone.’

He was still only for a fraction of a second, and his lean, darkly handsome features betrayed nothing. Yet Maddie knew in that same instant that there was no misunderstanding, no joke, and no lie: the guy she had allowed herself to fall madly in love with was engaged to another woman. Her skin felt cold and clammy. Shock was setting like pointed shards of ice in her stomach. He was speaking Greek on the phone, but somehow his dark-timbred drawl sounded to her as though it was coming from the other end of a long dark tunnel. Through him she had learned to recognise the sound of his language. Did Krista speak Greek as well? Hastily she tried to shut out that thought. Because she wasn’t ready to think about the unfortunate woman whom she had inadvertently wronged.

Giannis raked a keen-eyed glance at Maddie. She was as pale as death, her Titian hair like a burning firebrand against the pallor of her alabaster skin. He could not concentrate on the conversation with Krista, which related, as usual, to her latest selection of extravagantly inappropriate wedding themes. His lean, powerful face set with purpose, he brought the call to a swift close and swung back to Maddie.

‘This is not the way you should have found out about Krista,’ Giannis conceded. ‘But until you came to Morocco I believed that you already knew of her existence. My engagement is common knowledge.’

‘But you should have told me.’ Her voice almost failed her, because with every word he spoke the nightmare became more real, and more agonising for her to bear.

‘I intended to tell you when you got back to London.’

Maddie parted near bloodless lips. ‘After you’d had your fun?’ she slotted in tightly, a deep sense of humiliation creeping over her. ‘How long have you been engaged?’

‘A couple of months. I see no reason why it should come between us.’

Maddie was too shattered by what she had found out to do more than shake her head in incomprehension at that bold statement. The conversation had already knocked her off balance, since he was not reacting as she had assumed he would. He was not apologising, he was not making excuses. Indeed, he was not even owning up to his fault.

‘I want you to take the time to consider the fact that what I have with Krista is quite separate from what I have with you.’

A mortified laugh that carried no humour fell jarringly from Maddie’s dry lips. ‘I hardly need to be told that. I may not be very sophisticated, but even I can tell the difference between an engagement ring and the equivalent of a dirty weekend!’

His big powerful body tensed. ‘That is not how it has been between us.’

‘How would I know how it’s been when I’ve been in the dark ever since the first day?’ Maddie demanded feverishly. ‘Why did you involve me in this horrible situation? And why did you bother getting engaged if you don’t intend to be faithful?’

‘Perhaps fidelity is not as important to some people as it is to you,’ Giannis delivered. ‘I will only say that my conscience is clear as far as my engagement is concerned.’

‘Well, bully for you…so your fiancée was desperate enough to take you on those terms? Presumably she made that choice.’ Maddie watched his lean strong face tighten with hauteur and marvelled at his self-assurance, his stubborn refusal to acknowledge that he had done wrong. ‘But I didn’t get that opportunity. You lied to me—’

‘I have told no lies,’ Giannis asserted.

‘You lied to me by omission.’ Angry patches of colour had blossomed in Maddie’s cheeks. ‘Last night you knew I didn’t know you were engaged when I said I wouldn’t be with you if you weren’t single. But you chose not to tell me the truth.’

‘We had already slept together. I didn’t see the point of upsetting you when you were away from home.’

That was the precise point at which Maddie lost her temper, for it seemed to her that he had the hide of a rhinoceros. ‘In other words, you put your own comfort first and decided that it was fine to leave me in ignorance. It didn’t matter to you that I was betraying my values in getting involved with a man who’s planning to marry another woman. Or that the knowledge that our relationship is not an exclusive one makes me feel physically sick!’

His lean, dark face hardened, his strong jawline squaring. ‘Of course it matters to me. But one cannot live one’s whole life by rigid rules—’

‘Particularly not when they conflict with what Giannis Petrakos wants?’ Maddie dared. ‘There are good reasons for the rules I live by.’

Giannis studied her with glittering golden eyes. ‘I want you more than I’ve wanted any woman for a very long time. Walking away wasn’t an option.’

‘Let’s not exaggerate my supposed attraction,’ Maddie cut in rawly, a pain as sharp as a knife twisting through her. ‘Obviously it’s only sex, because my personal appeal won’t prevent you from marrying someone else. Yet you talked about me not knowing how to behave? Don’t you think I had the right to know I was just a casual fling? A little bit on the side of the main event? If you had had any respect for me at all, you wouldn’t have treated me like this!’

‘You’re wrong about that. There was an explosive attraction. Nor do I think that self-denial makes anyone a better person.’ With that ringing rejoinder, Giannis went into the dressing room and pulled out fresh clothing. ‘We’ll discuss this when you’ve calmed down. I consider arguments a waste of valuable energy.’

‘And walking out the ultimate escape hatch,’ Maddie told him tightly.

That incendiary comment brought Giannis back into view, his tailored chinos still unbuttoned at his lean waist, his bronzed hair-roughened chest still bare. He refused to consider the rights and wrongs. What was done was done. But he was determined not to lose her. ‘I don’t do escape hatches.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Just arrange for me to get home as soon as possible.’ She tilted up her chin and drew on every ounce of her pride to hide her pain. ‘I don’t mind having to sit around the airport for hours and wait for a flight either.’

‘This is crazy. Why should you leave? It’s nonsense to say that what we have is casual,’ Giannis insisted forcefully. ‘I want you in my life—’

‘Well, I think I can safely say that this is one of those very rare occasions when you don’t get what you want.’ Green eyes glittering with furious condemnation, Maddie surveyed him.

‘I won’t let you leave.’

‘You have no choice.’ Maddie yanked out her overnight bag and devoted her attention to packing the few items she had brought from London. She hated him, but she was terrified that the agony of picturing him in another woman’s arms would still kill her by inches. She had to keep busy. Activity and the need to think of practicalities were the only things capable of keeping her sane.

Giannis watched her piling her possessions into an untidy heap. He did not do emotional confrontations, he reminded himself doggedly. He did not do emotions, full-stop. He had never been into love and promises or, for that matter, stories of happily-ever-after. But he knew that she believed in all of those things, and that he had hurt her. He would give her the time and the space to quieten down. He did not believe that she would just walk away from him.

An hour later, Hamid informed him that Maddie was in the salon with her luggage. Giannis stared at the computer screen and realised that he had done no work during that time.

Clad in a simple white shirt and denim skirt, with her glorious hair confined by a band at the nape of her neck, she was standing by the window.

‘I realise that you’re upset, but there is such a thing as the art of compromise,’ Giannis drawled softly.

‘Giannis…’ Maddie whispered in jagged interruption. ‘Compromise would only be another word for you using me, and I’m not a glutton for punishment. But I have decided that everything that’s happened isn’t entirely your fault. I have to take a share of the blame too.’

His ebony brows pleated. ‘Meaning?’

Maddie wanted to tell him about Suzy, because she was convinced that this would be the last time she ever saw him. ‘For you to understand, I have to go back nine years in time to when I first saw you. I was fourteen years old.’

Giannis was intrigued. ‘The first time? How? Where?’

‘You visited my twin sister in a children’s hospice.’

Disconcertion made him frown. ‘A hospice?’

Her generous mouth compressed. ‘Her name was Suzy…and, no, you didn’t notice me on either visit. I was just one of the admiring crowd round the tea trolley. My sister had leukaemia and not much time left. A fortnight later you returned and brought her favourite pop pin-up to visit her. She was overjoyed. He was her hero, and that day you became mine for doing it for her.’

Giannis was astonished by what she was telling him. He too had lost a sibling as a teenager, but that was something he never discussed. Furthermore, what she said had cut through even his tough shell and drawn blood. He was her hero and that day you became mine. Ten words, and every one the equivalent of a spear in the guts, Giannis conceded grimly. ‘Your sister—Suzy—died?’

Her beautiful green eyes sad, Maddie nodded.

‘I’m sorry. Over the years I’ve visited hundreds of children. I’m afraid I don’t remember her,’ he admitted.

‘It’s long time ago. I didn’t expect you to. I just wanted you to know that, even though everything has gone wrong between us on a personal level, I’ll always be grateful for the fact that you made my sister so happy.’

‘I don’t want you to be grateful, pedhi mou,’ Giannis breathed in a roughened undertone. ‘Gratitude in that field is the one thing I have never sought from anyone.’

‘But I hope it explains why I acted so stupidly when I finally got the chance to speak to you. I had this false picture of you—a silly, immature image. I’m sure I gave you the wrong impression.’

His gilded bronze eyes darkened and screened. ‘Theos mou…I don’t want to hear this.’

‘I must go.’ Maddie would not allow herself to look at him again. Hamid had already told her that the heli-pilot was waiting to fly her to the airport. She would not allow herself to drag out their final meeting. Giannis had made her weak, but she was determined to be strong and make a dignified exit.

‘You did not give me the wrong impression,’ Giannis asserted, his accent very thick. ‘I saw you and the deed was done. The hunter’s instinct is a powerful one, and the more you resisted me, the more I desired you. I am sorry that I hurt you. But think long and hard before you turn your back on what we share. That happiness is not easily found.’

‘But it was fool’s gold,’ she responded, with a bitterness she had to battle to conceal. ‘And it turned to dross in the light of day.’

Dark golden eyes bleak, Giannis watched the helicopter take off. His big, powerful frame taut with frustration, he tossed back a brandy. His stubborn jawline clenched. Her departure had unleashed uncomfortable reactions within him. His resistance to her climbed in direct proportion to that disturbing knowledge, because he disliked the sense that he was not fully in control. Perhaps it was fortunate that he would not see her for a while. After all, he was not a hero, and he had never suffered from the delusion that he might be. He thought it was just typical of Madeleine Conway that she only wanted a guy who was a bloody hero!

She had storybook ideals—fantasy expectations. His conscience, never the most active part of his psyche, creaked into action to remind him that she had believed he was single and unattached. He remembered how gutted she had been. He had behaved like a bastard, he acknowledged unwillingly. He had taken sexual advantage of a starry-eyed virgin who had evidently seen him in much the same light as an infatuated teenager. He recalled the shine in Maddie’s eyes when she’d looked at him that first day in his office. He wondered exactly what he would have to do to bring that shine back, and he did not doubt his ability to achieve that end. How was it his fault that other women had asked so little from him that he had become spoilt? Even a little lazy and arrogant?

While Maddie had values that he admired—even if living with them was a distinct challenge for him—she also had a lot to learn. Krista was not a negotiable element in his life, he reasoned. He had chosen Krista to be his wife, and he was not a changeable man. The only vacancy available was that of mistress. There were strict boundaries between his public life and that which he led in private. Maddie would have to understand and accept it. He would give her the chance to adjust to the concept of compromise. He refused to consider what he would do if she proved stubborn.

After a lengthy delay at the airport, Maddie returned to London and a grey wet morning. She felt the loss of bright sunlight almost as much as the loss of Giannis. He’d had her flown back to London on a Petrakos jet and, mindful of the crew, she had felt obliged to stay dry-eyed. Nemos had carried her bag right to the door of her bedsit, and even put the key in the lock for her. When the door had shut behind her she’d thought how hopelessly dark and drab her rented room seemed.

She was quick to remind herself that this was her real world. Had she resisted temptation, as all her instincts had urged, she would not be feeling as though someone had forcibly torn her in two.

But at least she now understood why her time in Morocco had felt unreal. How could it have felt like anything more serious or durable? Her love affair had just been a casual sexual intrigue to a Greek billionaire for whom one woman was clearly never going to be enough. He had picked her because she had been so amazingly free with her favours in his office. Had she paused to ask him then if he was a single man? No, she had not. So it would be hypocritical to blame him for the entire débâcle. Having torn up the rulebook of how she lived her life, it seemed she was now paying the price for being free and easy.

The next day she was wakened by the delivery of a magnificent bouquet. She would not allow herself to read the card and, although the waste of such beauty brought tears to her eyes, she dumped the flowers.

Feed a cold and starve a fever, her grandmother had often said, and Maddie knew she had a fever that required brutal discouragement. She refused to wallow in the belief that she loved Giannis. How could she have loved someone she hardly knew? She had to get over him and do it quickly. But the craving for him nagged at her like a constant pain. She did not know how to kill the terrible bone-deep longing just to see his lean, dark face one more time. Her peace of mind was gone as well. How would she ever forgive herself for the mistakes she had made? The mistakes she had then excused so that she could go on making them with him? Her self-esteem was at rock bottom.

Keen to get back to work, and even more eager to earn some money, she had already let the employment agency know that she was available again. Luckily she had to work at the supermarket that night. At the end of her shift she emerged wearily for the walk home.

A limo pulled in ahead of her, the chauffeur stepping out to open the passenger door for her. ‘Please go away!’ she hissed, praying that none of her co-workers were behind her.

But the limo followed her home, and she was on the stairs when Nemos appeared, carrying a large wicker hamper. ‘Nemos…please,’ she muttered tiredly. ‘I don’t want this.’

He set the hamper down at her door. ‘Mr Petrakos sent us to pick you up from the store and deliver this.’

‘Is he still in Morocco?’ she heard herself ask.

‘Athens…on business.’

Maddie went red, because she knew she wasn’t practising what she had preached to Giannis or herself. She shouldn’t have asked; where Giannis was and what he might be doing was nothing to do with her any more. At her urging, Nemos took the hamper away again.

She slept badly that night, and woke up at dawn. The smell of someone frying food had drifted into her room and curdled her tummy. Her period was due today, and she was desperate to have her fears set to rest. Might stress and a guilty conscience have made her imagine that she felt dizzy and sick? She was pleased when the agency phoned and told her that she would be temping for the week in a big insurance company. And then her neighbour, Mrs Evans’s daughter, asked if Maddie could spend a couple of hours with her mother while she went out. Glad of a distraction from her worries, Maddie went downstairs to sit with the old lady.

Mrs Evans enjoyed the benefit of cable television, and told Maddie to pick a programme from a multitude of channels. Skimming through the many options in the magazine she had been handed, Maddie stiffened in surprise when she saw a photo of Giannis above a few lines about a documentary on his love-life. The programme had already started, but she put it on in time to see an incredibly beautiful blonde girl stepping on board a giant white yacht. From that moment Maddie was hooked, and yet nothing had ever hurt her more than watching that programme.

She made tea for Mrs Evans at a run during the commercial break, so that she didn’t miss anything. She was so ashamed of her painful curiosity to know who Krista was, and what she found out only wounded her more.

Set next to Krista Spyridou, with her platinum hair and supermodel looks and gloss, Maddie could only see herself as a plain Jane with a weight problem. She marvelled that the exquisite Krista was not enough to satisfy Giannis. Was he just a rat in the fidelity stakes? Perpetually addicted to the novelty of fresh faces? It was no consolation to see innumerable shots of him with an endless procession of gorgeous high-profile women. But as Maddie watched, learning that Giannis had known Krista since childhood and seeing pictures of them together overlaid with a commentary about how much the couple shared, her heart twisted inside her. They did look like a perfectly matched couple. Both of them were Greek, beautiful, rich, sophisticated and fashionable. Maddie knew that she was none of those things, and she wondered how she had contrived to tempt Giannis. Although it hurt her to acknowledge it, she also accepted that Giannis had to genuinely care about Krista. Why else would a guy with so much choice and so much experience have decided to marry her?

As soon as Maddie had finished work the following day, she went straight to a pharmacy and bought a pregnancy testing kit. Her nerves worn thin, she sat in her bedsit and read the instructions over and over until she knew them by heart. When she could no longer put off the moment of truth, she did the test and the result came through very quickly.

She was going to have a baby.

Right on cue she felt light-headed again. She was in shock. In spite of Giannis’s immovable belief that there would be no repercussions from the condom accident, she was pregnant. Yet he had almost managed to convince her that she was worrying needlessly. Had that been his wishful thinking? A sob convulsed her throat. Suddenly she felt very young and very scared. She had managed to do everything wrong. She had conceived during a casual sexual encounter. Giannis Petrakos cared nothing for her and would certainly not want her to have his baby. Nor, quite naturally, would Krista Spyridou. What would such news do to Giannis’s intended bride?

Maddie wept long and hard with guilt and unhappiness. She knew how gutted she would feel if the man she was about to marry got another woman pregnant. Krista, who was innocent of all blame, would be hurt and humiliated. It might also be a very public humiliation, Maddie conceded sickly. Until she had glimpsed the Petrakos lifestyle on television she had really not appreciated just how newsworthy and wealthy Giannis was. If the press were to discover that he had fathered a child by a lowly office temp, the story would almost certainly be front-page news. And what role would be assigned to Maddie in such an unlikely triangle? Most probably that of gold-digging tramp, she reckoned painfully. For she was not a beautiful pedigreed golden girl like his photogenic bride-to-be.

And what good would such a scandal do any one of them? Particularly her poor child, who would have to look back on it all some day in the future? When the contraception had failed Giannis had compared the risk of pregnancy to a disaster. And, unless she was very much mistaken, he had made no further reference to that possibility precisely because it was his worst-case scenario come true. In all likelihood he would hope that Maddie would agree to a termination—but she was not prepared to consider that option.

A wave of bitter pain and regret scythed through Maddie. Was it really her duty to pin a chance pregnancy on a man who didn’t want to know? A man planning to marry the gorgeous Krista Spyridou? Hadn’t Giannis Petrakos trampled enough on her pride? Did she really have to lower herself to that extent?

So tired that she felt as though she was sleepwalking, Maddie went back into work at the insurance company again the next day. She got wet walking from the bus stop, and shivered in her damp skirt and shoes while she sorted through ancient dusty filing cabinets in a cold, grim basement room. Every few minutes she would remember afresh that she was pregnant, and she would start fretting again.

How would she live? She barely earned enough to feed herself as it was. Babies needed a lot of equipment and clothing. Childcare was very expensive. How would she hold down a job? And if she couldn’t manage to stay in employment the baby would not have much of a future to look forward to because they would be living on the poverty line.

Mid-morning, she was called to an office on the ground floor and asked to wait there by a senior manager, who seemed rather nervous and uncomfortable. While she was worried that she had done something wrong, she was grateful to have the chance to sit down in comparative warmth and comfort.

When the door opened, she rose to her feet in an uncertain motion. An almost inaudible gasp parted her lips when Giannis appeared.

‘What are you doing here?’ Maddie shook her bright head in disbelief.

CHAPTER SIX

GIANNIS ran brilliant dark golden eyes over Maddie’s pale, shaken face. He was disconcerted by the change in her. She had bluish-grey shadows below her eyes, and the triangular fragility of her face had taken on a pinched quality that suggested she had lost weight in only the few days since he’d last seen her. His black brows drew together in a frown.

‘You look terrible.’

Pained colour seared her cheeks. No, she had no inner glow like his very beautiful fiancée—no glistening straight blonde hair, no thinner-than-thin perfect body to offer. Of course he must have seen Krista again while he was in Greece. Of course he was now comparing her to Krista, possibly without even knowing he was doing it. Her already laden conscience urged her to stifle such inappropriate thoughts. She was jealous, downright horribly jealous, of a woman she had wronged! The shame of that awareness cut through her, and she hated Giannis for bringing her down to such a level.

‘Are you ill?’ Giannis demanded.

‘No, of course I’m not!’ Maddie spun away, turning her back on him while she struggled to rescue her composure.

In her mind’s eye she could still see him, and her heart was racing and pounding as if she had run up a hill. One glimpse of his lean, darkly handsome face, one scorching encounter with his gilded bronze eyes, and she wanted to throw herself at him. For a split second, a wicked moment in time, it didn’t matter what he had done. She just wanted to forgive him so that she could be with him again. The coiled knot of heat in her pelvis was radiating a wanton physical awareness that shook her. Her breasts were heavy, the rosy tips swollen.

Affronted by her weakness, she forced herself to concentrate, and turned back to him. ‘What are you doing here? How did you manage to walk into this office?’ she asked in an accusing rush. ‘How did you even know where I was?’

‘I own this company.’ Giannis spread long brown fingers in a stylish gesture of dismissal. ‘I wanted a meeting, and it was arranged with discretion.’

‘You actually own this business?’ Maddie prompted, half an octave higher. ‘Is that why I was offered the chance to work here this week?’

‘If you must work—and I would prefer that you did not,’ Giannis murmured with silken stress, ‘why not work for me?’

‘Why? Does it give you a kick, pushing people around? Like I’m some piece on a chessboard and this is a game?’

His keen gaze narrowed and glittered. ‘I want you back, pedhi mou. I very much regret the distress I have caused. This is definitely not a game for either of us.’

‘And would you still feel the same way if I was pregnant?’ Maddie heard herself throwing that provocative challenge, and was startled by her daring. She was toying with the truth that she was not yet ready to voice, testing the water. But the instant she finished speaking she realised that now she would have to tell him she had conceived.

The answering silence yawned like a frightening abyss. Her fingers clenched into her palms and etched little purple crescents. She wanted—no, needed a positive response. All her hopes were laid out in a pathetic line in front of her, vulnerable and defenceless.

His lean, strong face had shuttered. His beautiful smart dark eyes, semi-screened by his dense black lashes, narrowed to grim points of light. ‘Are you pregnant?’

That single demand came with the telling speed and precision of a bullet to the heart. The chill factor in the air turned her to pure ice, and pain threatened to crack her down the middle. ‘No,’ she heard herself say cheerfully, hiding her true feelings behind all the pride she could muster.

Only ferocious self-discipline prevented Giannis from swearing out loud. What a question to throw at him! His perfect white teeth were gritted. The fall-out from such a development would rock the foundations of his world. Why the hell had she asked him that? What a stupid, tasteless question! As if a pregnancy could be anything other than a major catastrophe that would require handling. Babies and mistresses didn’t go together.

Maddie hated him at that moment. She wanted to wrap her arms protectively round her still-flat stomach. She wanted to shout that her baby would do just fine with her, and would never, ever need a selfish and heartless rat like him as an uninterested father. Instead she said flatly, ‘I’d like to go back to work. Please don’t approach me again.’

‘How long are you planning to keep this up?’ Giannis growled with furious impatience and growing frustration. Once again she was behaving differently from all the other women who had preceded her. ‘I won’t be back in London for at least two weeks.’

A humourless little laugh escaped Maddie. ‘Why are you telling me that? Didn’t you hear me? I’m asking you to leave me alone.’

Before she would work out his intention, Giannis strode forward, closed his hands over hers and claimed her luscious mouth with a devouring, driving heat that left her giddy and breathless. ‘Let’s not talk,’ he breathed in a heartfelt plea. ‘Let’s go back to my apartment.’

Maddie peeled herself off him again. It was quite an operation: she was leaning into him, with her fingers clenched on his shoulder, her other hand splayed across his shirt-front, her palm warmed by his body heat and the steady thump of his heartbeat. Another few seconds and she knew she would have been inside his jacket with him. No wonder he was inviting her back to his apartment. She was a slut—a total slut, she told herself in disgust. That one passionate kiss had set up a chain reaction of craving that made her entire body melt and quiver.

‘No. I—’

Giannis curved long fingers round her wrist to halt her steady retreat towards the door. ‘What do you want me to do? Beg?’ he ground out.

With a mighty effort of will, Maddie yanked her fingers free and stepped back from him. ‘You’re engaged—’

‘That’s business…You’re very much in the pleasure category,’ Giannis murmured in a roughened undertone.

Her green eyes glinted pure emerald, and defiance was written in every rigid line of her shapely figure and stance. ‘But I don’t want to be with you now. You’re wrong for me.’

‘There aren’t many old-style heroes out there.’ His golden eyes challenged her.

Maddie was trembling. ‘Perhaps not…but I’m sure there are a few decent, trustworthy guys left. Maybe even one with principles, who doesn’t think his money entitles him to do as he likes. Some day I’ll meet someone I can respect—and, believe me, he’s not you!’

His face saturnine in cast, Giannis had fallen very still, for he was not accustomed to being insulted. A forbidding light had entered his piercing dark eyes. ‘Regardless of what it takes, you will learn to respect me. I can wait. I will be patient. In the end I always get what I want.’

‘But I won’t ever be with you again,’ Maddie vowed vehemently. ‘Now I’m going back to work.’

She returned to the filing room in the basement. For several minutes she stared into space and tried to still the inner trembling affecting her. She felt cold inside and out, and utterly bereft. Hating him and wanting him was threatening to tear her apart. But now there was a kernel of fear edging her responses. For how long would she be able to withstand the dangerous combination of his strength and determination pitted against her own longing?

Sensible people moved on from mistakes, and perhaps she needed to move on in a literal sense, she reasoned feverishly. She had no ties in London, and it was a very expensive place to live. If she moved away now she would be able to make a fresh start well in advance of her baby’s birth. If Giannis did not know where she was he would have to leave her alone, and she would not be tempted back into a relationship that would destroy her. While she might have little money in her bank account, she did have a post office savings nest-egg which contained the fifteen hundred pounds that her grandmother had left her. It would cover the expense of any move.

That evening, Maddie began going through her things and sorting out what could be recycled through a charity shop and what should have been dumped long ago. Travelling light would make relocating less of a challenge.

And would you still feel the same way if I was pregnant?

The ultimate high jump, Giannis conceded in vexation, an austere cast to his wide handsome mouth. It had been a test, however, and he had failed it. Until he had met Madeleine Conway, Giannis had believed that a luxurious lifestyle and extravagant gifts were sufficient to tempt any woman into pleasing him. But Maddie was complex, challenging, and yet in many ways more basic. What did Stone Age Woman want from Stone Age Man? Giannis asked himself grimly. Stone Age Woman expected her guy to supply protection, food and shelter. In much the same way, Maddie wanted a guy she could depend on to look after her in all circumstances. So she had thrown the pregnancy loop and he had bombed. Why? Like most very rich men, he was accustomed to dealing with avaricious scheming women and ceding nothing, calling in his lawyers to clean up and ensure that the press never got wind of it.

Maddie, however, had been asking a simple question to establish the level of his commitment to her. What if? And, cynical, guarded and astute as he was, he had been too clever for his own good. She had expected an honest response, but he could not recall when he had ever answered a leading question from a woman with simple candour. He avoided relationship discussions. He dumped women prone to striking up such conversations. But Maddie occupied a class of her own, and she required more painstaking management and support. She had needed to hear that, whatever happened, he would take care of her. Regrettably, she had given him insufficient time to work out the reality that only forthright sincerity would win him a hearing.

‘Mr Petrakos…?’ one of the Greek board members murmured. For the silence had lasted and lasted, and everyone round the massive table was getting very nervous.

Giannis shot him a chilling glance. ‘Don’t interrupt me. I’m thinking.’

What the hell had Maddie been playing at? Giannis wondered in seething frustration. Where did she get the nerve to tell him that he was not decent, honourable or worthy of respect? Surely only the most severe distress could have provoked her into such base accusations? She should have had the sense to appreciate that a guy with as much money as he had could not possibly afford to ignore or deny the potential time-bomb that would arise from the existence of an illegitimate child. Just because he had never felt any great need to reproduce it did not mean he did not know what was right and proper, either. Some day, after all, he might have children with Krista.

Without warning he was assailed by the image of a spoilt, imperious little girl with a bored, petulant expression, who only cracked a smile when she looked in the mirror. It was closely followed by an equally daunting image of an ignorant, idle son with the same sulky vacant look that Krista wore when the conversation went above her head. If her genes triumphed, what would happen to the Petrakos power-base in the next generation? Giannis was unable to repress a shudder. At that precise moment he knew that he would not marry Krista. He could not work out how he had ever believed that he could.

Forty-eight hours later, Giannis flew out to Paris to break off his engagement. Since their betrothal Krista had been using all his properties, and was currently staying in his townhouse there while she visited friends. He did not give advance warning of his arrival, and when he strode into the hall Krista was screaming like a virago at a cowering maid.

‘Giannis…’ Tiny spots of colour adorning her perfect cheekbones, Krista dismissed the tear-stained member of staff with an imperious wave and turned to greet him as though nothing had happened.

‘Problems?’ Giannis enquired.

Krista complained that he was so rare a visitor to the household that his staff had become sloppy. Giannis was sceptical, because he had seen the vicious look etched on Krista’s face. He had once heard a rumour that the Spyridous had paid off a maid who’d accused Krista of assault. His fiancée gave him a winsome smile that displayed her pearly teeth to perfection. It was wasted on Giannis, who had not only been put in mind of his late mother’s drug-fuelled tirades against her long-suffering servants, but who had also remembered Maddie’s unfailing courtesy with his staff in Morocco. Impatient, however, to do what had to be done, he said nothing more on the subject. In the huge, airy drawing room, he told Krista as gently as he could that he no longer wanted to marry her.

‘You don’t mean it…It’s the wedding arrangements giving you cold feet,’ Krista informed him.

‘The fault is mine. I’m not ready to make such a commitment,’ Giannis countered steadily.

‘But you won’t find being married to me any different to being single!’ Krista pouted. ‘Giannis…I know you enjoy your freedom. You’re a Petrakos male. Womanising is in your blood.’

‘I’m sorry. Our engagement is at an end.’

‘But I’ve made so many arrangements.’

Giannis was quick to assure her that his staff would take care of everything. He was prepared for her every protest. Like a rock in a storm, he withstood reproaches, thwarted tears of rage and a screaming tantrum. Her greatest source of concern was that she would look foolish, and she baulked at his suggestion that they release an immediate joint statement to the press. In a rare gesture he agreed to let her choose the timing and the content of any such announcement.

Also, because he did feel that his change of heart was very hard on her, Giannis presented her with a jewellery case. He had purchased the contents as a wedding gift. ‘Please accept this set as a token of my continuing affection and esteem.’

Krista was as responsive to the glimpse of a large jewel case as a well-trained snake was to a charmer. The magnificent diamond and sapphire set, once the property of now deposed European royalty, brought ecstatic gasps of delight to her lips. Suddenly she was all smiles again.

Giannis was leaving when she said brightly, ‘I’ll wait for you to get this bug out of your system.’

He sent her a wry glance. ‘It’s not a bug.’

She tossed her hair so that it fell like pale blonde candy floss round her exquisite face. ‘I’m perfect for you. Everybody says so. When we get back together we’ll be like Romeo and Juliet.’

‘It’s over, Krista.’ Giannis resisted the urge to point out how Romeo and Juliet’s romance had ended. Instead he rejoiced in the energising sense of freedom gripping him. He knew he would never propose marriage again. It had been a serious mistake on his part. He should have listened to his instincts. If he needed a hostess he would hire one. Maddie had held a mirror up to him, and he did not like the reflection he’d seen.

Thirty-six hours after attending business talks in Dubai, Giannis flew back to London. Although he had yet to forgive Maddie’s behaviour at their last meeting, he could not wait to see her, and he went straight to her bedsit, planning to surprise her.

But the surprise was his, because there was no answer at her door. By the next day Nemos had established that she had moved out of her accommodation without leaving a forwarding address. Giannis insisted on seeing the room and having it searched. He could not credit that she was gone.

Why? He was a very logical guy. But he still could not comprehend why. No woman had ever run away from him before. Why would she do that? She wanted him as much as he wanted her. What was her problem? One minute she kissed him as if she couldn’t live without him, and the next—Raging frustration sizzled through his big, powerful frame. How long would it take him to track her down? There was a chance that he might never find her. That was the cue for the weirdest sense of paralysis setting in to his long powerful legs. Aggressively healthy as he was, he wondered if he was coming down with an illness.

Only when he had swung back into the limo did Nemos bend down to pass him an item. ‘It was in the rubbish bin. I thought you’d want me to be discreet.’

It was the packaging for a pregnancy testing kit. So evidently she had been worried—much more worried than he had been, Giannis registered in surprise. Had he struck her as insensitive? He grimaced. Why was that word working its way into his vocabulary? He had simply thought it improbable that the only contraceptive failure he had ever experienced would lead to conception. And he had been proven right, hadn’t he? But at least he now understood why she had been so angry when they’d last met. She had resented his more mature outlook and his calm lack of concern on that score—which now he found perfectly understandable.

The magazine was well read, and its cover was beginning to come off. Even from the other side of the waiting room, however, Maddie recognised the juxtaposed photos of Giannis and Krista. Practically in one motion, she pushed herself up off her seat and swept the publication off the table. The issue was weeks old. On the cover, a jagged lightening flash split a photo of the couple apart, and below ran the headline: Jilted? Too impatient to sit down again, she stood flicking through the pages in search of the corresponding article. It took several minutes for her to find it, because the piece was only a few lines long and not very informative.

An unnamed mutual ‘friend’ had let it be known that the Greek society wedding of the year was off. No reasons were given. Both Giannis and Krista had refused to comment on the rumours, and had asked for their privacy to be respected. Maddie drew in a slow, deep breath and clutched the magazine tightly.

‘Miss Conway?’

‘And this is your first visit to us?’ The middle-aged doctor sighed as he weighed her and took her blood pressure. ‘You must be at least five months pregnant.’

‘About four months…’ Maddie told him. ‘I saw a doctor in Southend when I was about six weeks along. Everything was fine then.’

The doctor said nothing. Unless she was mistaken about the dates, he thought, there was a problem. She was very noticeably pregnant. She looked thin and tired, and he wasn’t happy with her blood pressure. He examined her and said that he would like her to have a scan at the hospital.

‘Also, I don’t think you should be working,’ he added.

‘I’m only doing a few hours here and there. I can’t afford to quit.’

‘Do you want this baby?’

Losing what little colour she had, Maddie nodded in dismay.

‘Then you need to rest and take it easy.’

Fear gripped Maddie. The only thing that had kept her sane through the long lonely weeks since she had left London had been the comforting prospect of her child. True, she had felt endlessly tired, and sick enough to lose her appetite and some weight, but it had not occurred to her that her pregnancy might be at risk. Confronted with that threat, she was appalled. She was living in a bed-and-breakfast, and working odd shifts as a cashier in a restaurant which was open to all hours.

But if Giannis was no longer engaged there was no reason why she shouldn’t contact him and ask him to help her out. Naturally she would have preferred to remain proudly independent—not least because she had not told him the truth when she might have done. But all of a sudden she was painfully and guiltily aware that she should be putting her baby first and her pride and her feelings last.

It was months since Giannis had given her the embossed business card, but she still had it in her purse. Before she could lose her momentum, she went into the shopping centre to find a public phone. She punched out his mobile number very slowly. Her heart was beating so fast and her mind was so full of apprehensive thoughts that she very nearly dropped the receiver before the call was answered.

Giannis spoke in Greek, which unnerved her.

‘Hello…it’s me,’ she announced stiltedly. ‘I mean, sorry…it’s Maddie.’

At the other end of the phone, Giannis rose from his seat. Every predatory instinct on instant hyper-alert, he murmured as smoothly as silk, ‘I’ve been hoping to hear from you. Where are you?’

The rich, accented timbre of his deep voice touched memories Maddie had not known she had, and brought a surge of unexpected moisture to her eyes. ‘I’m in Reading,’ she said gruffly. ‘I need to see you.’

‘Any time. Give me your address—I’ll send a car to pick you up,’ Giannis suggested, determined to pin her down to an exact geographical location.

Not yet ready to advance that amount of trust, Maddie spread uneasy fingers over the gentle swell of her stomach. ‘No. I’ll get the train to London this afternoon.’

An expert negotiator, Giannis knew when not to push. He had picked up on that audible note of wariness. ‘Where do you want to meet? My apartment?’

‘No…’ But her mind, she discovered, was a total blank. The doctor had said it was hormones, but sometimes she felt as if her brain had been hijacked.

She had no objection, therefore, to Giannis stepping straight into the breach with the immediate assurance that she would be met at the station and brought to a hotel where they could dine.

‘It’ll be very relaxed.’ Giannis was determined to do and say whatever it took to draw her out of hiding, though he was using persuasive tactics that were utterly new to him.

Maddie wondered dully how hungry he would feel after she had broken her news. Since she could hardly take care of that in a public restaurant, she felt she had to say in warning, ‘I sort of need to talk to you in private.’

Whatever, Giannis thought, energised by a wave of satisfaction and impatience. She had missed him. Of course she had. He had picked up on a hint of tears in her voice, but even so she had stayed away for over three bloody months! Strange how a woman who could be so gentle could also be as stubborn as a mule and as hard as granite. He realised that he was as angry with her as he was pleased, and it was a volatile combination. But stronger than either prompting ran a deep, atavistic need to stamp her as his again, with the raw, physical intimacy that would ensure she never ran in the wrong direction again. This enthralling imagery in mind, Giannis cancelled all his afternoon appointments with a casualness that shocked his personal assistants.

Even though it was a hot day, Maddie wore a long jacket which, amazingly, did a good job of concealing her changing shape. Nemos greeted her with a warm, welcoming smile and shepherded her through the busy station. She alighted in a quiet side street. The lavish hotel foyer was wrapped in the intimidating silence of an exclusive establishment. Her nervous tension increased, her palms dampening.

‘Mr Petrakos is in here…’A door was spread back and she saw him for herself: tall, vibrantly dark and devastatingly handsome, he wore a silver-grey business suit with the classy sheen of madly expensive silk. He was all she saw—the only element in the room that she could focus on. A tiny pulse was beating too fast in the hollow of her collarbone.

His first thought was that she looked incredibly lovely, like a painting brought to life. She looked tiny and fragile in a voluminous black jacket which acted as a vivid foil for her Titian mane of curls and pure white skin.

‘Would you like a drink?’ he murmured softly.

‘Oh, no—I mean…’

Giannis strode forward and offered to take her coat. He didn’t like the way she was hovering, or the evasiveness of her green eyes. He had never been so tense. He was trying not to think of what he would do if she decided to walk away again.

‘No…no, it’s okay.’ Maddie backed away, and then thought how ridiculous she must look—how pointless it was for her to try and delay the announcement that she had to make. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

‘You’re very jumpy? I can see that for myself.’

Maddie breathed in deep. ‘About three months ago I told you a lie.’

‘You’re forgiven,’ Giannis asserted huskily, feasting his appreciative and somewhat amused gaze on her, because he was convinced that what she termed a lie would only qualify as the most minor fib. After all, nobody knew better than he did that she had sterling principles set in stone.

‘But you don’t know what I lied about yet.’

His gilded bronze eyes narrowed and raked over her, lingering on the soft pink fullness of her mouth. ‘You look amazing. You’d have to be a guy to understand. Promise to come home with me tonight and I won’t even ask what the lie was, pedhi mou.’

Maddie could not initially credit his response, and then intimate and deeply embarrassing memories stirred and surfaced. He exuded hot, sexual energy, and he had taught her the meaning of exquisite pleasure. A heavy flush heated her entire skin surface. She could not deny that in Morocco she had been with him every step of the way. Furthermore, the extent of the passion he’d awakened had shocked her. She had not even known that it was possible for her to want a man to the extent that he could make her want him. So was it any wonder that he did not take her very seriously?

‘Do you ever think of anything other than the bedroom stuff?’ she asked in a stifled tone of discomfiture.

‘Not around you…it colours everything,’ Giannis confided in a driven undertone, opting for the honesty that she had insisted she wanted from him. ‘It even gets in the way of business. Perhaps if I had you all to myself for an unspecified length of time, and I could live out my every erotic desire, I could think of other things…occasionally.’

‘Like…as in having a serious conversation?’ Maddie prompted tightly, as she unbuttoned her jacket with trembling hands.

‘Don’t hold your breath, glikia mou.’ His lean, strong face taut, his brilliant dark eyes flashed languorous gold above his bronzed cheekbones. ‘I’m not into those.’

Maddie yanked off her jacket in a decidedly challenging fashion and pitched it at a chair, fearful that at any moment she would lose her nerve. She also hated herself for the fact that she really didn’t want to show him her pregnant body. He had found her unpregnant body deeply attractive and sensual.

‘And possibly you aren’t either,’ Giannis added thickly, hoping very much that she was going to continue with the strip.

He didn’t care how many serious conversations he had to be subjected to afterwards. Indeed, he dimly accepted that that might well be the price. She was a little conscience on legs, heavily prone to feeling bad about his natural human flaws. He just wished she could see how simple everything would be if she could only think as he did. She was back. They were together. He wanted her to come home with him. What was wrong with a celebration? There was no need to discuss the fact that she now had her own discreet surveillance team of three, who would ensure that she never got lost again. No, he didn’t make the same mistake twice.

‘G-Giannis…?’ Maddie stammered, the tip of her tongue sliding out to moisten her lower lip in the heavy silence. She had assumed that he would immediately notice that her trim waist had vanished.

Instead his smouldering gaze was locked to the sinfully ripe contours of her moist pink lips. ‘I love your mouth…’

Maddie realised that her black T-shirt and stretchy skirt were doing a better job of concealment than she had expected. Sucking in her breath, in the pathetic hope that some of her tummy would go in with it, she muttered unevenly, ‘Don’t you notice anything?’

On an erotic high of anticipation, Giannis was taking his time about inspecting her wonderfully rounded shape. The voluptuous curve of her bosom left him spellbound, and his scrutiny lingered there with the purist’s attention to detail. He was picturing her on his bed, in his office, in his apartment, on his private jet. Always there for him, always available. ‘Your breasts are amazing…’

Maddie went scarlet with rage and stress and disbelief and turned sideways. ‘What about my stomach?’

Sleek ebony brows pleating, Giannis stared. Black lashes lowering, he blinked, too taken aback to instantly grasp why she should look from that angle as if she had swallowed a cushion. ‘Enormous…’

Her eyes smarted; her face tightened and paled. Well, he had shot straight from the hip—and she had always known that he would find her rotund proportions deeply unappealing, hadn’t she?

‘Pregnant,’ Giannis almost whispered in Greek. And then he said it again for good measure in English. ‘But you can’t be pregnant because you said you were not.’

A silence full of dangerous sparks began to simmer in the tense atmosphere.

‘Isn’t that so?’ Giannis murmured lethally.

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