About the Authors

JULIA JAMES lives in England and adores the peaceful verdant countryside and the wild shores of Cornwall. She also loves the Mediterranean—so rich in myth and history, with its sunbaked landscapes and olive groves, ancient ruins and azure seas. ‘The perfect setting for romance!’ she says. ‘Rivalled only by the lush tropical heat of the Caribbean—palms swaying by a silver sand beach lapped by turquoise water… What more could lovers want?’

MAISEY YATES is a New York Times bestselling author of over seventy-five romance novels. She has a coffee habit she has no interest in kicking, and a slight Pinterest addiction. She lives with her husband and children in the Pacific Northwest. When Maisey isn’t writing she can be found singing in the grocery store, shopping for shoes online and probably not doing dishes. Check out her website: maiseyyates.com.

Also by Julia James

Securing the Greek’s Legacy

The Forbidden Touch of Sanguardo

Captivated by the Greek

A Tycoon to Be Reckoned With

A Cinderella for the Greek

The Greek’s Secret Son

Tycoon’s Ring of Convenience

Heiress’s Pregnancy Scandal

Billionaire’s Mediterranean Proposal

Mistress to Wife miniseries

Claiming His Scandalous Love-Child

Carrying His Scandalous Heir

Also by Maisey Yates

The Greek’s Nine-Month Redemption

Carides’s Forgotten Wife

Brides of Innocence miniseries

The Spaniard’s Untouched Bride

The Spaniard’s Stolen Bride

Heirs Before Vows miniseries

The Spaniard’s Pregnant Bride

The Prince’s Pregnant Mistress

The Italian’s Pregnant Virgin

Once Upon a Seduction… miniseries

The Prince’s Captive Virgin

The Prince’s Stolen Virgin

The Italian’s Pregnant Prisoner

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Irresistible Bargain with the Greek & His Forbidden Pregnant Princess

Julia James and Maisey Yates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08823-7

IRRESISTIBLE BARGAIN WITH THE GREEK & HIS FORBIDDEN PREGNANT PRINCESS

Irresistible Bargain with the Greek © 2019 Julia James His Forbidden Pregnant Princess © 2019 Maisey Yates

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Irresistible Bargain with the Greek

Back Cover Text

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

His Forbidden Pregnant Princess

Back Cover Text

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

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

About the Publisher

Irresistible Bargain with the Greek

Julia James

She ran from their attraction…

But can she resist the billionaire’s deal?

Dutiful heiress Talia Grantham shared one earth-shattering evening with sinful stranger Luke Xenakis, knowing that they could never be anything more. So she’s stunned when the enigmatic Greek returns, having bought her father’s business out from under him! Arrogant Luke offers Talia a job to save her family home… She can’t turn down the arrangement—or deny their inescapable, life-changing chemistry!

Escape with this intense revenge romance…

PROLOGUE

THE BEDROOM WAS still in shadow, the thick drapes masking the early dawn outside. On feet she could hardly drag forward Talia forced herself to the door. Every cell of her body screamed in silent protest, but she made herself do what she knew she had to do.

Leave.

Leave the man sleeping in the wide bed, the bare, lean-muscled torso that she had caressed in ecstasy exposed by the half-drawn cover.

Emotion stabbed her like a knife eviscerating her insides. To walk out on him—oh, dear God—to make herself walk out on the man who had swept her off her feet, who had taken her to a paradise she had never dreamt existed! The man who had offered her for such a pitifully few blissful hours the hope of something she had never known.

Escape—blissful, wondrous escape—from the prison in which she was trapped.

The prison to which she was returning now.

Because she could do nothing else.

As she turned the door handle as quietly as she could she could feel her phone vibrating yet again in her evening bag. It summoned her back home to the prison in which she had to live.

The knife twisted again. It mocked the wonders of the night she had just spent in this man’s arms—how he had taken one look at her and with that single look she had known she would do what she had never done in all her life: give herself fully and rapturously to him without hesitation or doubt.

She had let him sweep her away from the party, their eyes only for each other, glorying in the sensual desire that had consumed her, that she had never known before in all her life. More—oh, surely more than only physical passion!

Another twist of the knife stabbed yet more achingly. There had been a connection between them as tangible as their bodies entwining in blazing passion in the night—something that had drawn them to each other. An ease in conversation, a natural communication that had brought smiling laughter bubbling up in her, a warmth and closeness that had been more than the physical union of their bodies…

The final twist of the knife almost made her cry out with the pain of it as she silently eased the bedroom door open, unable to tear her eyes from the man she would never see again.

Could never see again.

And now the anguish flooded through her veins, drowning her. She could never do what they had so ecstatically talked of in the long, long reaches of the night.

‘Come with me!’ he had said, his eyes alight. ‘This night is only the start of what we shall have together! Come with me to the Caribbean—a thousand islands to explore! We’ll see them all! And every single one will be for us! Come with me…’

She heard his voice, warm and vibrant, ringing in her head.

‘Come with me!’

Her hand flew to her mouth to stifle the sob that rose in her throat. Impossible! It was impossible for her to go with him.

Impossible to do anything but what she was doing now.

Leaving him.

CHAPTER ONE

The previous evening

LUKE XENAKIS GLANCED up at the Victorian warehouse, converted now into highly fashionable loft apartments in the old London Docklands. He’d come here from the City, straight from that final meeting with his broker—the one that had taken him over ten long, punishing years to achieve. And now, at last—Thee mou!—at last he had done what he had set out to do.

Emotion speared through him, hard and vicious. Finally he was exerting his death-grip on his enemy’s throat.

A life for a life.

His ancestors would have had no hesitation in making that bitter truth a literal one. Luke’s mouth twisted as he entered the building. But in these more civilised days there had to be other ways to exert savage justice upon those who so deserved it. And now—tonight—that justice was finally being served upon his enemy.

Within twenty-four hours the man would be destroyed.

Wiped out financially. Ruined.

The twist in his mouth turned to a smile. A savage smile.

He headed up the echoing iron staircase to the topmost loft apartment, from which he could already hear the thump of pounding music, driving all other thoughts out of his head.

It was just what he wanted now.

The start of his new life…

Talia paused in the entrance lobby to the loft apartment, hesitant suddenly. Should she really dive into the party inside? Then she rallied her nerve.

I need this.

Tonight, at least, for the space of a few hours she would lose herself. Forget the pressures of her life—pressures that were increasing all the time, it seemed.

She sighed inwardly. She knew why. Her poor mother’s nerves were more jagged than ever, and her father’s perpetually short temper was even shorter these last few months. Why, Talia had no idea, and she didn’t want to know. She spent all her energy trying to soothe her nervy mother and placate her tyrannical father so he would not turn on her mother.

It was wearying and stressful, but she had no option, she thought bitterly as she paused on the threshold of the party. No option but to go along with what her father wanted of her or it would be her mother who would pay the price of his vicious ill humour and displeasure.

So I have to go on being Natasha Grantham, ornamental daughter of the wildly successful property magnate Gerald Grantham, of Grantham Land. I have to be part of the image he puts out, along with his elegant, fashionable wife, his huge riverside mansion in the Thames Valley and this even more huge villa in Marbella. And the luxury apartments all over the world, the fleet of exorbitantly lavish cars, the yacht and the private jet. All of this so that others can envy his success and wealth and achievement.

It was all her father cared about—his success and his image. Certainly not about his wife and daughter.

The pitiful thing, Talia thought bleakly, was that whereas she was painfully aware of that bleak truth, her mother persisted in believing the fiction that he was devoted to them. She made endless excuses for him—the pressure of work, the demands of his business, he was doing it all for them. But Talia knew that her father was devoted only to one person and one cause: himself.

She and her mother were merely possessions—props to make him look good. Her mother, Maxine, was expected to be a glittering society hostess, and she was to be the decorative dutiful daughter, working for him as his interior designer, overseeing the refurbishment of his property purchases as he directed, and available on demand for the endless social functions he required her to attend. In exchange she was allowed to live rent-free in one of his many London flats, with an allowance to cover her wardrobe expenses.

Talia’s eyes shadowed again. The world saw her as a pampered princess, her daddy’s darling—but the reality was brutally different. She was a pawn in the ruthless power game at which her father excelled as he controlled every aspect of her life with an iron fist.

To get any time away from his demands was precious to her. Like tonight. On an impulse that was quite unlike her, she’d taken up a casually worded invitation from someone she knew in the world of interior design to come to this party. It was not her usual scene at all. Typically, on the rare nights she had to herself, she stayed in, or occasionally went to a concert or the theatre, either on her own or with a girlfriend.

Never with a man.

She never dated. Only once had she indulged in an affair, in her early twenties, but her father had ruthlessly used his influence to ruin the young man’s career, and then told Talia what he had done. She had learnt her lesson.

Now, at twenty-six, it was hard to accept that she could never indulge in a relationship of her own choosing. All around her partygoers were mingling with each other, dancing, flirting, hooking up. Restlessness filled her.

How long can I endure my life as it is?

Never had the gilded cage she lived in seemed more unbearable. Never had she felt so trapped, so stifled. Never had she felt more desperate to escape.

And tonight, dear God, she would escape it. She would immerse herself in the party and dance the night away. Her mother was at the Thames-side mansion, her father abroad—probably with one of his mistresses.

The longer he was away the better!

She took a breath, plunging forward. Through the crush she could see, way across the huge room, beneath the iron girder rafters of the loft apartment and the steel columns dividing up the space, an area that had been set up as a bar.

As she made her way towards it, squeezing past people, she could feel male eyes on her. It was a familiar feeling—all her life she’d known that her glorious chestnut hair, tawny eyes, fine-boned features and flawless skin were part and parcel of the image her father wanted her to present to the world, reflecting well on himself for having a beautiful ornamental daughter to show off.

Usually she dressed at his diktat, in suits and dresses that were too fussy for her own taste. But tonight she was defying his rules. She gave her head a little shake, feeling her long hair, loosened from its customary upswept style, snaking lushly down over her bare back, framing her face. She’d used more make-up than she usually did, accentuating her eyes, her cheekbones, her rich red mouth.

The strapless dark burgundy dress she was wearing—shorter than she typically wore, and far more figure-hugging—had been an impulse purchase that afternoon, bought from a second-hand designer boutique she favoured because it helped her spend less of her allowance than her father realised, and little by little she could squirrel away some funds into a personal bank account he could not monitor. Just in case one day she could make a break for freedom…

She yanked her mind from that tantalising, though as yet hopeless dream, and focussed on reaching the bar. She could feel her hips sway as she stalked forward on vertiginous five-inch heels. Reaching the bar, she paused, resting her lavishly braceleted wrists on the downlit surface. She wanted a drink. Not to get drunk, but simply to signal to herself that tonight she was going to please herself. Let go a little. Lighten the endless crushing pressure of her life.

Live a little for herself, just for once.

‘White wine spritzer, please,’ she said, and smiled at the barman.

‘And a sloe gin for me, please, while you’re at it.’

The voice that had spoken behind her was deep and very slightly accented. She found herself half turning—and then stilled.

The man standing there was tall—easily six foot plus—and without her volition Talia felt her eyes widening in raw, female appreciation. It was an instinctive, visceral response to what she was seeing.

Dark hair, dark eyes, tough jaw, a blade of a nose and a sculpted mouth, wide shoulders, a broad chest, narrow hips, and long, long legs…

The man’s gaze flicked from the barman to her, and an even more visceral reaction swept through her. In the assessing sweep of his eyes she saw instantly—felt tangibly—that he liked what he was seeing and was making no attempt to hide it. He let his dark gold-flecked eyes rest on her almost with a sense of entitlement, and she felt an answering quiver go through her that was shocking in its intensity.

It was as if he knew she would welcome his blatant approval of her appearance. As if he knew she would return it. As if he had no idea that she was Gerald Grantham’s daughter, who was never free to follow her own impulses, whatever they might be. Whatever a man like this might incite in her…

She felt a strange quiver go through her, a flush of heat rush up her body—of which she had become suddenly, vividly aware beneath his dark assessing gaze. She was conscious of the swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips, the expanse of shoulders and throat exposed to his gaze and the wanton fall of lush hair down her naked back…

She felt her breath catch—half in shock at her own uncontrollable reaction, half in unstoppable response to the way this man was looking at her. She knew her pupils were dilating as part of her instant, overpowering reaction to his physical appeal, and there was nothing she could do to disguise it.

What is happening?

The words seared across her consciousness. This was like nothing she had ever experienced! Not even with the one lover she had ever had.

She saw him complete his appraising sweep of her, and then he was reaching out a hand to close it around the ice-dewed tumbler being set down for him on the bar, raising it to his mouth in a leisurely fashion.

‘To a suddenly more interesting evening,’ he said, and tilted the tumbler at her.

The dark glint in his eye revealed his intentions and the tug at his mouth showed satisfaction.

For a second Talia felt something clench inside her—a kind of hollowing out that went right to the core of her and made it impossible for her to break the dark, binding hold of his eyes.

Oh, God, what has he done to make me react like this?

With a final effort she schooled her expression and, making no reply—which would have been impossible anyway, struck as she was with sudden breathlessness—reached for her wine glass, which was also now on the bar. Did her lifting of the glass make her hand tremble slightly? Or was it the after-effect of that assessing perusal?

She took a mouthful of her spritzer—a larger gulp than she’d intended. But she felt she needed it. Badly.

She realised the man was holding out his free hand towards her. He was wearing dark trousers and a white, deceptively simple shirt that she could tell was expensively tailored. It was open-necked, the cuffs turned back, exposing tanned, sinewy wrists, and he was sporting a watch she recognised as a luxury brand. Even the kind of people who frequented flashy, fashionable parties like this could not easily afford such a custom-made timepiece.

The dark eyes were resting on her still. The glint was gone, and now there was only speculation in his gaze.

‘Luke,’ he said, his hand still extended.

He was clearly waiting for her to respond in kind. And he seemed to have every confidence that she would.

As if of its own volition, she felt her hand take his. Felt the coolness of his fingers, the strength in them. A door seemed to be opening—a door that beckoned enticingly, alluringly.

‘Talia.’ She smiled.

Quite deliberately she used the name she had adopted as her own. Her father always called her Natasha, in place of her given name, Natalia, which was preferred by her mother. But ‘Talia’ was neither her father’s dutiful imprisoned daughter nor her mother’s protective guardian. ‘Talia’ was herself—and tonight…oh, tonight, on this brief, rare opportunity to be herself, it seemed fitting.

‘Talia…’

She heard it echoed in a way that made it sound somehow more exotic, more sensual. His low voice had the trace of an accent in it, a timbre that seemed to set her vibrating at some subliminal level.

The dark glint of his eyes came her way again, and that knowing tug at his mouth. He took a considered mouthful from his glass, then set it back on the bar, letting his forearm rest on the surface. His stance altered, became relaxed.

But he wasn’t relaxed. The thought flickered in her head. He was like a panther, trying not to startle its prey before it was ready to pounce.

‘So, Talia, tell me about yourself.’

The invitation was casual, merely a gambit to continue the exchange. An exchange that was based, as she was so electrically aware, not on who they were but on the current that was running between them.

She paused a moment, taking another sip of wine. Should she go along with this, considering the powerful physical impact this man was having on her? Because of it?

Yet even as she hesitated, hovering between habitual caution and that intoxicating glimpse of freedom, she heard her own voice answer. ‘I’m an interior designer,’ she said.

Her voice was quite composed, she was glad to note, which was so at odds with what she was actually feeling as she sipped again at her spritzer. She saw him lift one questioning eyebrow towards the stark interior around them.

‘This place, for example?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘No, this isn’t my style at all!’

She glanced around the bare brick walls, the industrial RSJs exposed across the lofty roof space, the reclaimed floorboards and the spotlit modern art adorning walls.

Her eyes shadowed momentarily. Though this starkly modernist interior was not to her taste, it was true, her own style was not something she was ever allowed to express. Her father dictated exactly what he wanted her to do: produce flashy interiors that looked as if they cost a lot of money. And she was expected to produce them on a miniscule budget in order to maximise her father’s profit on resale.

She hated everything she produced for her father.

No!

She would not think about her father now, nor about anything to do with the prison she lived in. Not when this amazing man was focusing on her, making her pulse quicken, making her eyes want only to gaze on him, drink him in…

‘And what about you?’ she heard herself asking, absorbing the way the planes of his face accentuated his looks, the way his dark eyes matched the sable of his hair—absorbing everything about him…everything…

He gave a slight shrug. ‘Investments,’ he replied.

He had said the word carelessly, but there was something in the timbre of his voice that was edged like a blade. Talia’s eyes flickered uncertainly.

‘You must be good at it,’ she observed, her eyes slipping to the custom-made watch around his lean wrist.

He saw her glance at it. ‘A present to myself today,’ he said dryly.

‘A very nice one!’ Talia murmured, even more dryly. ‘Is it your birthday?’

‘Better,’ he replied, taking another mouthful of his drink. ‘I’ve just achieved something I’ve worked towards for more than ten years, and it’s going to be a sweet, sweet moment.’

There was that same edge to his voice again, but it was more intense now. Almost…unnerving.

Not a man to cross.

‘You sound very driven,’ she heard herself say.

His expression stilled. ‘Driven? Oh, yes…’ For a moment he seemed to be looking far away, then abruptly his gaze refocused on her. ‘So, what brings you here tonight, Talia?’

The unsettling note in his voice had gone and now there was only…invitation. Invitation in the sweep of his lashes, the slight but distinct relaxing of his pose as he helped himself to another mouthful of his drink.

She shrugged. ‘What brings anyone to a party?’ she countered.

That sweep of his lashes came again, as if her answer amused him. ‘Do you want me to answer that?’ he challenged.

Unspoken between them was the answer already. The reason so many people went to parties was to see and be seen. And to hook up…

She gave a little shake of her head, dipping it slightly to take a sip from her glass. Then, as if the wine had emboldened her, she glanced back at him. ‘Is that why you’re here?’

This time his lashes did not sweep down. This time his gaze was level on her. ‘Perhaps,’ he murmured.

His gaze lingered, telling her just why he had said that. She felt heat flush through her. Heat she was not used to. Heat that might burn her.

This is going too fast! I should back away, mingle…

But he was speaking again, draining his glass and setting it back on the counter. His eyes washed over her, and as they did so all the caution in her evaporated. She felt her pulse surge, her cheeks flush, her lips part. A heady sense of freedom—of what that freedom might offer her—was vivid within her. What this man had she didn’t know. She only knew that never, ever in her life had she encountered it or experienced the impact he was having on her.

And she could not—would not—resist it.

Whatever is happening, I want it to happen!

‘But one thing I am certain of,’ she heard him say, and there was that glint in his eye that told her just how certain he was, ‘is that tonight calls for champagne!’

He turned to the barman and instantly two flutes were presented to them, sparkling gently. Talia took one, feeling again that heady surge in her veins.

‘Is this a toast to your “sweet, sweet moment”?’ she asked, lifting her glass to him, a smile flashing in her own eyes now, as they met his boldly.

For a second his hand stayed, and then he lifted his own glass to her.

‘To even more,’ he said.

The message was unmistakable, and it told her just what ‘even more’ would be.

And in her eyes was the answer she was giving him…

Luke lay, one arm behind his head, the other around Talia’s slender waist. Her long hair swathed his chest and her breath was warm on his shoulder as she slept in his embrace. Sweet God, had there ever been a night in his life like this?

It was a pointless question. No woman had ever been like this one!

From the very first I knew it.

From that first moment of seeing her there, at the bar, with her glorious hair tumbling down her bare back, her spectacular figure sheathed in that clinging dark red dress… And her face… Oh, her breathtaking beauty was so dramatic, so stunning, it had stopped him in his tracks.

Desire, instant and immediate, had fired in him—the unmistakable primitive response of a man to a woman who seared his consciousness. Whatever it was about her, it was like a homing signal, drawing him right to her.

Talia.

A woman he had known only a few short hours, but who had turned his life upside down.

He felt his arm tighten possessively around her. He had known right from the first instant that he wanted her—that she, of all the women in the world, was the one who would mark for him the start of his new life.

My old life is done. I have accomplished what I had to do: the task that was set for me the day my father died from sorrow for what had been taken from him and the day my mother died of a broken heart.

His thoughts darkened, slicing back down the long punishing years to the moment when he’d vowed to avenge his parents, who had been stripped—cheated—of everything they’d held so precious.

The stress of it had killed his father, and the man who had done that had laughed in Luke’s face when, at barely twenty years old, he’d stormed into his office, raging at him, only for the cursed man to light a fat cigar with his fat fingers and summon his goons to beat up Luke, his victim’s son, and throw him out on the street.

And now he is destroyed. I’ve taken everything from him just as he took everything from my parents. They can finally rest in peace.

And he, too, could rest now—rest from the infinite pursuit of more and yet more money, so that he could forge the weapon that would finally bring down his enemy.

Now his whole life stretched ahead of him.

He had been wondering what he should do with it, but suddenly his expression changed, softened.

In the long years of amassing his fortune, closing the net on his enemy, he had had only fleeting affairs with women who had only wanted that. Affairs that had been merely a brief respite from the dark, driven purpose of his life. Affairs that had not lasted.

I wasn’t free to do anything else.

But now his long, gruelling task was accomplished, and there was nothing to keep him from finding for himself a woman who could transform his life, who could join him as he journeyed towards the bright, sunlit future that beckoned to him.

And he had found her! Instinct told him she was the one.

He drew her close, grazing her cheek with his mouth, feeling her stir in his arms. He felt a stirring in himself, too, of the desire that had burned between them—the desire that they had slaked with mutual urgency when they had left the party and he’d brought her back here to his hotel suite.

They had dined on food from room service and drunk yet more champagne. They had talked of he knew not what—except he knew that it had not been about themselves. It had been with ease and familiarity, and with a ready laughter that had seemed to spring naturally and spontaneously, as if they had known each for so much longer than a bare few hours.

And he had found her on the very night that he had finally avenged his parents by accomplishing his enemy’s total destruction. He had wanted this night to be special, so that it would mark the start of his new life—the life he’d never been able to claim for himself until now—and now he knew exactly how he wanted this wonderful new life to be.

It would be spent with this woman, and this woman alone…

He felt a shuddering wonder at having found her at such a moment. He grazed her cheek again, softly and sensuously, emotion filling him. She stirred again in her exhausted sleep of passion spent, her arm around his waist tightening instinctively. His mouth moved from her cheek to her parted lips, feathering their tender contours. He felt her waking, and as he trailed a hand over the sweet mound of her breast he felt her nipple crest beneath his palm and his arousal strengthened, quickening his responsive flesh. Desire surged in him and he knew that he wanted to possess her again—to be possessed again.

His kiss deepened and she responded to him, her eyes fluttering open, full of wonder and full of desire. Full of a hunger that he was only too happy to share and sate. His body moved over hers and he murmured her name, caressing her soft, slender body, parting her slackening thighs as her arms wound around his spine. She was whispering his name, drowning in his kisses…

This second time was as glorious as the first—each reaching their climax with a shuddering intensity that swept them away in the ultimate union, an absolute fusing of their bodies. And afterwards, hearts still thudding, breathing ragged, he held her against him, her body trembling in the aftermath of ecstasy.

With a hand that was not entirely steady he smoothed back her hair. He smiled at her, his eyes lambent. But there was a seriousness in his voice behind the smile. ‘You know this can’t just be one night?’

Her eyes searched his. ‘How can it be anything else?’

Her voice was troubled, and he needed to set her mind at rest. ‘Do you not see how special this is? This night is only the start of what we shall have together.’ He swooped a sudden kiss upon her mouth. ‘Come with me. Come with me today—straight away, this morning!’

For an instant that troubled look was in her eye, and then, as if consciously banished, it was gone.

‘Where to?’ she cried out, half in humour, half in an emotion he could not name.

‘Anywhere we want. Name somewhere you want to go. Anywhere at all.’

She laughed now, catching his eagerness. ‘The Caribbean!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve never been in all my life!’

‘Done!’ He gave an answering laugh. ‘Now all you have to do is choose the island.’ He rolled onto his back, wrapping one arm around her shoulders, the other across her flank. ‘There are a thousand to choose from—we can explore them all!’

He heard her laugh again, and then he was cradling her cheek with his hand.

‘Come with me.’ His voice was different now. Serious. Intense. ‘Come with me.’

His eyes met hers, held them. She was still gazing up at him, and the troubled look had found a home there once more.

Could she not believe that he was serious? That this was no idle banter?

He drifted his hand languorously across her silken flank and felt her stomach tauten at his sensuous touch. ‘Let me persuade you,’ he said huskily.

Emotion was welling up in him, as powerful as the desire building in him again. Words shaped in his mind.

I will not lose her—not now. I will not.

It was his last conscious thought as passion was rekindled between them, consuming all in its heat.

I will not lose her…

Luke stirred. Something was wrong. Very wrong. He reached out his arm, feeling only cold sheets. His eyes flared open, going immediately to the en suite bathroom door. It was standing open, no one inside. His eyes swept the room.

No Talia.

And no handbag, no shoes, no jacket, no dress. No discarded underwear slipped from her eager body as he’d taken her to his bed, to sate himself on her and change his life for ever…

No trace of her existence.

Except the note propped on the desk.

Face stark, he got up and walked towards it. Something was tightening around his guts, like a boa constrictor throwing its coils around him to crush the life from him.

Luke—I have to go. I didn’t want to wake you.

That was it. Nothing else. For a long moment he just stared at it as the breath was crushed from his lungs. Then, wordlessly, he screwed it up and dropped it into the bin.

He walked into the en suite bathroom refusing to feel a single emotion.

CHAPTER TWO

TALIA SAT IN the back of the taxi, staring at her phone. It was signalling a low battery, and she was glad of it in a cowardly way. Her brain was not working properly. It seemed to be split in two, and neither side would connect with the other. She was still with Luke, folded against his body, dreaming of Caribbean islands.

Islands to escape to…islands to set me free…

Free from what her eyes were forcing into her head as she reread her mother’s repeated pleading texts.

Darling, phone me! You must phone me. You absolutely must!

She could not face making the call. Yet fear was biting at her out of nowhere. Her mother had never sounded so desperate…

But before she phoned her she must get to her flat, set her phone to charge and then shower—wash Luke from her. And she must change into her day clothes—what she thought of as her prison clothes.

A shaft of anguish pierced her. She silenced it. She had to. There was no choice but to bury it way down deep. Her prison door had opened—but for a fleeting moment only. Now it was slammed shut again and that fear was biting at her.

Something was up. What could have made her mother so desperate?

The taxi driver pulled up at her apartment block and she paid him, clambering out on shaky limbs, bare feet crammed into high heels. She slipped the phone into her bag and hurried to the exterior doors of the block.

The doorman stepped towards her, holding up a hand. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Grantham, but I’ve orders to prevent anyone entering,’

She stopped short. Stared blankly. ‘Orders?’ she echoed, her voice blank.

‘Yes, miss,’ he said. ‘From the new owners.’

She tried to make sense of what he’d said. ‘Someone’s bought the block from Grantham’s?’ she said stupidly.

He shook his head, looking at her with a touch of sympathy. ‘No, miss. Someone’s bought Grantham’s—what’s left of it.’

Talia’s mother flung herself at her.

‘Oh, darling, thank God—thank God you’re here! Oh, what is happening? How did this happen?’

She was hysterical, and Talia was on the verge of hysteria herself.

How she had got herself from central London to her parents’ house she hardly knew. Her brain had simply ceased to function. Now, the only thing she could do, besides tightening her arms instinctively around her clingy, crying mother, was say, ‘Where’s Dad?’

Her mother threw back her head. Her hair was unstyled, her make-up absent—she looked years older than she did in the carefully presented image Talia was used to seeing.

‘I can’t contact him!’ Hysteria was present in her voice still. ‘I phone and phone and nothing happens! I can’t even get through to his office—it rings out! Something’s happened to him. I know it has. I know it!’

Gently, Talia set her mother aside. ‘I have to find out what’s going on,’ she said.

There was a stricken note in her own voice, and she was not sure how she was still managing to function, but she knew that above all she needed to discover what had happened to her father’s company. To her father…

Five minutes on the Internet later and she knew. It was blazoned all over the financial press.

Grantham Land goes under:

LX Holdings picks over the carcass!

She read the article in shock. Disbelief. Yet her disbelief was seared with the hideous knowledge that everything was true, whatever her desperate hope that it was not. Her father’s company had gone under, collapsing under a mountain of hitherto concealed debts, and all remaining assets acquired by a new owner.

Like her mother—sobbing jerkily on the sofa while Talia hunched over her laptop—Talia tried to phone through to her father’s office. The call rang out, unanswered. Unlike her mother, she then tried to find a number for the company that seemed to have bought what was left of Grantham Land, but LX Holdings did not seem to exist—certainly not in the UK.

She started to search for overseas companies, but realised how little she knew of corporate matters. The press didn’t seem to know much either—the adjective employed in their articles to describe the acquiring company was ‘secretive’.

As for where her father was… Talia knew with bleak certainty that filled her entirely that he had gone to earth. He would not easily be found. As to whether he would bother to get in touch with his wife and daughter…

Her mouth tightened to a whip-thin line. She turned her head towards her mother, huddled in a sodden mass of exhausted hysteria. Would her father care?

She knew the answer.

No, he would not. He had abandoned them to whatever would be the fallout from this debacle.

Fallout that, within a week, she would know to be catastrophic.

Luke sat in his office. Beyond the window he could see Lake Lucerne. He had deliberately chosen this place for his base because of its very quietness.

Throughout his entire career he had striven to draw as little attention to himself as possible. The financial press called his company ‘secretive’ and he liked it that way. Needed it that way. He’d needed to amass the fortune he’d required for his purpose as unobtrusively as possible.

His corporate structure was deliberately opaque, with shell companies, subsidiaries in several jurisdictions, and complex financial vehicles all designed with one purpose in mind: to amass money through careful, assiduous speculation and investment without anyone noticing, and then, once his fortune was sufficiently large, to hunt his enemy to destruction.

And now his enemy was defeated. Destroyed utterly. Wiped off the face of the earth—literally, it seemed. For, like the sewer rat he was, he’d gone to ground.

Luke had a pretty shrewd idea of where he’d gone, and it was not a place where he would feel safe. Those from whom his quarry had borrowed money in his final desperate attempts to stave off the ruin rushing upon him were not likely to be forgiving of the fact that he could not repay them at all.

He tore his mind away—that was not his concern. His concern was what to do with the rest of his life.

He felt his guts twist. His face hardened with a bleakness in his expression that he could not banish.

Weeks had passed since the night that had transformed his existence—when he had so rashly thought, for those brief hours, that he had started his new life, free at last from the punishing task he had set himself. He still could not accept what she had done—could not accept how totally, devastatingly wrong he had been about her.

I thought she felt as strongly as I did! I thought what was between us was as special to her—as mind-blowing, as amazing and as lasting—as it was to me. I thought we had started something that would change our lives.

That twist in his guts came again, like a rope knotting around his midriff. Well, he had thought wrong, hadn’t he? That incredible night had meant nothing to her—nothing at all.

She walked away with barely a word—just that brutal note. How could I have got it so wrong? Got her so wrong?

In the punishing years since he’d set out to wreak vengeance upon the man who had driven his father to an early grave he’d had no time for relationships—only those fleeting affairs. Was that why he’d got this woman Talia—the name echoed tormentingly in his head…Talia—so wrong?

What do I know of women? Of how they can promise and deceive?

With a razored breath he reached jerkily for the file lying in front of him. He flicked it open, seeking distraction from his tormenting thoughts.

The photos inside mocked him, but he made himself stare at them—made himself read the accompanying detailed notes and scan down the complex figures set out in the financial analysis provided.

With an effort of mind he forced himself to focus. The rest of his life awaited him. He had better fill it somehow.

His acquisitions team were busy stripping what flesh remained on the carcass of his prey, disposing of any remaining assets for maximum profit—which they would do, he knew, with expert efficiency. He had left them to it. His goal had been to destroy his enemy, not make money out of his destruction. He had plenty more of the money that he’d amassed—enough to give him a life of luxury for as long as he lived. Now all he sought were ventures to invest in that would be for his own enjoyment. And this project, displayed in the photos in front of him, would do as well as anything else.

His mouth twisted and thoughts knifed in his head. The photos showed palm trees, an azure sea, the verdant greenery of the Caribbean.

I would have taken her there…

The thought left a hollowness in its wake, an emptiness that would not leave him.

Talia stared out of the window of the low-cost carrier’s plane that was winging her to Spain. Dread filled her. Her mother was at the Marbella villa, where Talia had taken her in those first nightmare days after her father’s disappearance and financial ruin.

It had been painstakingly explained to her by the blank-faced lawyer who had summoned her to her father’s former City HQ, where she’d been able to see through the glass door all the deserted offices being dismantled and stripped of their furnishings by burly men. Her father’s ruin encompassed not only the corporate assets, but Gerald Grantham’s personal assets too.

‘Your father put everything he owned into the company—initially for tax advantages and latterly to shore up the accounts. Consequently…’ the man had looked impassively at Talia, who had stared back at him white-faced ‘…it all now passes to the acquiring owner.’ He’d paused, then said unblinkingly, ‘Including, of course, the riverside mansion in the Thames Valley and all its contents.’

Talia had paled even more, as the man had gone on.

‘Vacant possession is required by the end of the week.’

So she’d taken her mother to Spain, thanking heaven that the villa seemed to have been spared. It appeared to be owned by a different corporation—an offshore shell company her father had set up.

In Spain, she’d tried to sort out the pathetic remnants of what they had left—which was almost nothing. All their bank accounts had been frozen, and all the credit cards. Had it not been for Talia’s secret personal account—the one she’d opened in defiance of her father’s diktats—she would not even have been able to buy air tickets or food. Or to pay Maria, the only member of staff in Spain she’d been able to keep on. She needed Maria as her mother’s only support when she went back to London to see if there was news about anything else she could salvage.

But it had turned out to be the reverse. Now, with dread mounting in her, she knew she would have to give her mother the worst news of all. The Marbella villa was being taken from them…

They had been given a fortnight to get out, and in that time Talia was going to have to find them somewhere else to live and keep her mother from collapsing totally. It would finish her, she knew, to lose the villa as well as everything else—as well as her husband. Which was a loss she simply could not and would not believe.

‘He’ll come back to us, darling!’ Her mother’s pitiful words rang in Talia’s ears. ‘He’s just sorting things out, making it all right, and then everything will be back to normal again!’

Talia knew better. Her father was not coming back. He’d saved his own skin, leaving his wife and daughter to face utter ruin.

Her mother repeated her pathetic hopes again that evening, when Talia arrived at the palatial villa, its opulence mocking her. Talia said nothing, only hugged her mother, who seemed thinner than she had ever been, her face haggard. She looked ill and Maria, taking Talia aside, expressed concern for Maxine Grantham’s health.

Talia could only shake her head, feeling dread inside her at the news she must tell her mother.

She let her mother chatter on in her staccato, nervy fashion, telling her how the pool needed to be cleaned, and how Maria had to have help because she couldn’t cope with such a huge house on her own, and that she must get to Rafael, in Marbella town, who was the only person she trusted with her hair, because she couldn’t possibly let her husband see her with such a rats’ nest when he came back—as surely he would, very soon now.

Surely Talia must have heard from her father by now, she said. For she herself had not, and she was worried sick about him, because something dreadful must have happened for him not to be in touch…

Talia put up with it as best she could, saying soothing, meaningless things to her mother. As they sat down to eat the meal Maria had prepared Talia encouraged her mother to take more than the few meagre mouthfuls that was all she seemed to want. She had to force herself to eat, too, because above all she had to keep her strength up.

I’ve got to keep it together—I can’t fall apart! I can’t!

It was an invocation she had to repeat when, after dinner, she sat her mother down in the opulent drawing room and told her she must speak to her.

‘LX Holdings has made a successful claim on the offshore company which…’ she took a breath ‘…which owns this villa. Which means…’

She faltered. Her mother’s complexion had turned the colour of whey.

Talia’s voice was hollow as she made herself finish what she had to say. ‘We have to move out. They’re taking the villa from us as well.’ Her voice broke. ‘I’m so sorry, Mum. I’m so, so sorry—’

A cry broke from her mother, high and keening. And then, as if in slow motion, Talia saw her mother’s expression change, her hand fly to her chest. Her whole body convulsed and she shook like a leaf.

‘No! I can’t! I can’t! I can’t lose this villa too! Not this too! I can’t! Oh, God, I can’t!’

There was desperation in her mother’s voice, and then she collapsed into a sobbing, hysterical mess, clutching at Talia. But Maxine Grantham was beyond any kind of soothing…beyond anything except complete collapse.

Restlessly, Luke seized the file from his in-tray, flicked it open, and stared down at the photos it contained. He frowned. Was this really a project he should go ahead with? It would take a lot of investment, a lot of work, and the return was uncertain.

Yet there was something in the photos that called to him. The state of brutal ruination inflicted by nature that the photos showed echoed across the years. Not earthquake damage this time, as in his memories, but the terrifying force of wind destroying whatever stood in its path.

His thoughts were bitter. Taking on such a project halfway across the world would help him put out of his mind what kept trying to occupy it—the infernal memory he needed to banish.

She didn’t want me—didn’t want what I wanted. Didn’t want anything about me.

He cut the endless loop that wanted to play and play inside his head and went back to staring at the photos, making himself read the notes compiled for him by his agent. He needed something to fill the emptiness inside him now that his enemy was destroyed and the burning ambition that had driven him all his adult life had been finally fulfilled.

The low ring of the phone on his desk interrupted his concentration and he reached for the handset absently. It was his PA, and her voice was uncertain.

‘There is someone here, Mr Xenakis, who is asking to see you. She has no appointment, and will not give her name, but she is very insistent. I told her it was impossible, but—’

Luke cut across her. He had no interest in whoever it was. ‘Send her away,’ he said curtly. ‘Oh, and is my flight booked and the villa reservation made?’

‘Yes, of course, Mr Xenakis, it is all done.’

‘Good. Thank you.’

He dropped the phone down on the desk, but as he did so there was a loud noise by the door to the outer office and it was suddenly flung open. The voice of his PA was protesting vigorously in English, not the French in which she spoke to Luke.

His head shot up, anger spiking at the intrusion. But the emotion died instantly when he saw who was pushing through the open door, his PA behind her, trying to stop her.

She stopped dead.

For a second there was complete silence, even from his PA. Then Luke spoke.

‘Leave us.’

But it was his PA he addressed. Not the woman who had forced herself into his office.

Not Talia.

Blankness filled Talia’s mind, wiping out every turbid emotion that had been raging inside her head since she had left Marbella that morning. With Maria’s help she’d got her wildly sobbing mother to bed and summoned her doctor. He’d prescribed a sedative, then taken Talia aside. He’d told her with a frown that such upset was not good for his patient, known to him already for her nervous attacks and for her weakened heart.

Talia had been appalled by the latter—her mother had never told her. The doctor had also made it clear to her that he blamed the slimming pills she took constantly. They’d put a strain on her heart—now exacerbated by her hysterical collapse.

‘She must have complete rest and quiet—and no further upset!’ the doctor had told Talia sternly. ‘Or the consequences could be most dangerous to her! Her heart cannot take any more stress of this nature!’

Talia had shown him out, his words mocking her with a cruelty that she could scarcely bear. No further upset…

She’d felt a beading of hysteria herself—they were about to be evicted from the last place that Talia had so desperately hoped might be salvaged from the debacle of her father’s ruin and disappearance. How could she possibly avoid further upset?

Throughout the sleepless night that had followed, during which she had tossed and turned, her hands clenching convulsively as she’d gazed tensely at the darkened ceiling, it had become clear that only one option was left to her.

Before she’d told her mother, her bleak plan had been to use the fast-dwindling amount of money she’d secretly squirrelled away to rent a tiny flat, somewhere in a cheap part of the costas, and then get the first job she could find to bring in a salary, however meagre. Her mother would be appalled, but what else could she do?

But if she insisted on that now, after the doctor’s grim warnings, she would be risking her mother’s life by forcing her to leave the villa and abandoning all hope.

By morning, dull-eyed and heavy-hearted, and filled with a kind of numb, dreadful resignation, Talia had come to the only conclusion she could. After her bleak exchanges with the lawyers in London, when they’d told her she and her mother were penniless and homeless, she had finally tracked down the headquarters of the mysterious LX Holdings. A morning flight had brought her here.

And now, paralysed by shock and disbelief, she was standing in the doorway of the huge office she had forced her way into in sheer desperation.

It could not be—it could not be…

Luke? But how—? Why—?

Shocked words fell from her frozen lips. ‘I don’t understand—’

With a curt gesture he dismissed his PA who backed away, closing the door as she left. She saw him step towards her. Heard him speak.

‘Talia…’

There was a hoarseness in his voice but his face was closed, filled with tension.

‘Why did you come here? How?’ The questions shot from him like bullets.

Talia felt her face work, but speaking was almost impossible. Two absolutely conflicting realities echoed in her head. Then slowly, as the hideous truth dawned on her, she made the connection—forced herself to make it.

‘It can’t be—you can’t be…’ Her voice was faint. Her face convulsed again. ‘You can’t be LX Holdings—’

She saw Luke’s brows snap together, as if what she’d said made no sense. His mouth twisted. ‘How did you find me?’ he said. He looked at her. ‘How did you know?’ he demanded. He had said nothing of his identity to her that fateful night—no more had she told him hers. So how…?

‘They…they told me. Your lawyers in London. When they spoke to me.’

Her voice was staccato, shock thinning her words. He was still staring back at her as if what she’d said made no sense at all. Her face worked again.

‘I’m Natasha Grantham,’ she said.

CHAPTER THREE

LUKE FELT THE world reel. He heard her words—how could he not?—but he felt only denial slice through him. No, he would not let her be that! Anyone but that!

She was speaking still, and he could still hear her—hear her and want only to silence her.

‘I’m Gerald Grantham’s daughter. You’ve taken everything he possessed. But…but I’m asking you not…not to take the Marbella villa as well. That…that’s why I’ve come here.’

Her voice faltered and she fell silent.

He stilled, and now a new emotion filled him—one that was cold, like ice water.

‘You are Gerald Grantham’s daughter?’ he repeated.

He had to be sure. In his head skimmed fractured memory from long years ago, when he’d first set himself to studying everything he could about the man he was going to destroy. Grantham had a daughter, yes, and a wife, too—always being trotted out at his side, dressed to the nines, glittering with jewellery, frequenting expensive venues, spending his ill-gotten money.

What had been the wife’s name? Marcia? Marilyn? Something like that…

And the daughter?

He felt that ice water fill his veins, heard her faltering voice echo in his pounding head, forced the connection through his brain. Natasha, she had said.

Logic clicked. Natasha. Wasn’t that a diminutive of Natalia? Talia…?

Talia!

Savage emotion seared through him, but he quenched it with the ice-cold water in his veins. His eyes rested on hers but they were masked, letting nothing show in them. He saw her nod and lick her lips. Those full, passionate lips that had caressed his body in ecstasy.

And all along she had been the daughter of the man he had spent his adult life seeking to destroy…

The irony, as savage as the emotion shredding his brain right now, was unbearable. How could the woman who had burned across his life so incandescently, so briefly, turn out to be the daughter of Gerald Grantham?

He tore his mind away. Focussed only on the present. Ruthlessly he slammed control over himself, refused to let any part of the emotion tearing across him show. There was no expression in his eyes and his body was taut and tense.

‘And you have come here wanting to keep the villa in Marbella?’ He echoed her words, his voice as impassive as his face.

He saw her nod again, as if her neck were stiff.

For one long, endless moment he just looked at her, fighting for control as the shock of her identity rampaged through his consciousness. He studied her as she stood in front of him, her stance rigid, clearly as shocked as he, and hiding it a lot less well.

Deliberately he let himself take in everything about her. She was wearing a suit in dark aubergine, a designer number, though too fussily styled to show her to her best advantage. Her glorious hair was confined to a plait, her make-up was subdued, and he thought she looked thinner than when he had seen her at that party.

He considered what had caused that: the sudden poverty she’d been plunged into…the complete reversal of her circumstances… What a blow that must have been to her.

Talia Grantham.

The name was like a dead weight around his neck. Gerald Grantham’s daughter—the gilded, pampered daughter of his enemy.

She was that all along and I didn’t know.

The realisation, coming as it had out of the blue, was like a savage blow to his guts, doubling him up with the force of it.

And now she was here, in a designer outfit Gerald Grantham’s money had bought for her, wanting to go on living in a palatial villa on an exclusive gated estate in the rich man’s playground of Marbella. As if she had every right to do so. Every expectation that of course she could go on living there.

Gerald Grantham’s daughter—taking the world for granted. Taking what she wanted just as her father had. Splashing his money on herself—money that had been bled from her father’s victims.

He could feel another emotion beginning to mount in him. It was an emotion he knew well, that had fuelled the last ten years of his life: slow, low-burning, inexorable anger.

But he would not let it show. Instead he went back to his desk and threw himself into his chair, swinging to look directly at her. As he gazed at her, taking in her presence a bare few metres from him, yet another emotion rose in him, just as powerful as his anger.

It was the emotion that had first kicked through every vein in his body as his eyes had rested on her at that fateful party. And it was instant, immediate, and impossible to deny. Impossible then and impossible now.

Thee mou, how beautiful she is!

It turned out nothing could change that—nothing! Not even the hideous discovery of who she really was and why she had come here.

Not to find me again—not to seek me out after abandoning me that morning, after that unforgettable night together. No, not for that—

Anger rose within him, cutting across the sudden overwhelming longing that was flooding through him as she stood before him, so incredibly, savagely beautiful. She was having exactly the same effect on him that she had had from his very first moment of seeing her, desiring her…

Turbid emotion filled him, mingling anger and desire, and it was a toxic, dangerous mix. It was impossible to subdue. It steered him now, formed the thoughts that swirled wildly in his head—thoughts he should not be having.

I should send her packing. I should tell her to get out of my office and get out of this villa she wants to keep for herself. I should have nothing more to do with her. She is my enemy’s daughter and she walked out on me as if I were nothing to her.

He could hear the words in his head and knew what they were telling him. It was the only sane thing to do.

But the words that came out of his mouth were not those words. He lifted his hands, as if making an accommodating gesture. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I don’t see why not.’

Even as he spoke the words he regretted them. But he could not call them back—would not. Something was starting to burn within him—a slow fire he knew he should extinguish to prevent it rekindling the passion he felt for her.

At his words he saw her expression lighten. He smiled and went on. ‘I am prepared to offer you a short-term lease—say three months—while you make alternative arrangements for your accommodation.’

He spoke briskly, in a businesslike fashion, watching her all the time.

He could see her eyes lighting up, see the visible relaxation of her stance at his reassuring agreement to what she’d come here wanting. She was getting what she wanted, despite what she had done to him.

His expression changed, becoming bland—deliberately, calculatingly so. ‘I’ll have a lease drawn up and rent set. I would think, given the size and location of the villa, something like thirty thousand euros a month should cover it.’

He watched her face whiten. Her reaction—such obvious outrage at his reply—made the anger inside him spear him again. But he would not let it show. Instead he smiled again, though it did not reach his eyes.

‘In life, Ms Grantham,’ he said, his voice silken, ‘we cannot have what we cannot pay for.’

He pushed his chair back, the movement abrupt. He stood and gave a shrug of deliberate indifference.

‘If you can’t pay the rent you must vacate the villa,’ he spelt out bluntly.

His eyes never left her, never showed any expression. Even though they wanted to sweep over her glorious body, concealed as it was beneath that fussy over-styled outfit she was wearing. It didn’t suit her—however expensive it had been.

Absently, he wondered at its difference in style from the simple yet stunning dress she’d worn at that party. He wrenched his thoughts away from where they must not go. His eyes from where they must not go either…

He saw her expression change, as if her own self-control was very near the edge. It must be a shock to her, he found himself thinking, bitterness infusing his every thought and his mouth thinning. Daddy’s darling daughter, realising her pampered lifestyle was over, that her doting father was no longer there to grant her every whim and wish.

‘No!’

He heard her cry out in protest at his brutal spelling out of the harsh truths of life, saw her face working.

‘Everything else has gone—but not that…not the villa too!’

For a moment so fleeting that Luke thought he must have misheard there seemed to be real fear in her voice, real despair…real desolation. She was staring at him, her expression pinched, and he thought he caught something vulnerable in the way she stood there, as if life had dropped a weight on her that she could not shoulder.

He felt a different emotion rise within him—one that made him suddenly want to blurt out that of course she could stay in the damn villa, that he didn’t give a damn about any rent. It made him want to surge to his feet, close the distance between them, take her into his arms and hold her close, to tell her he would make everything all right for her, all right for them both, that he never wanted to lose her again.

But then it was gone. She was only repeating what she’d said before, just more insistently. As if she was assuming, taking it for granted.

Of course she was Gerald Grantham’s daughter, was she not? She had never had to think of paying for anything at all. A rich man’s princess of a daughter, who got everything she wanted handed to her on a plate by an indulgent father.

‘I absolutely cannot lose the villa! I just can’t!’ Her eyes flared suddenly, widening as her long lashes swept down.

His mouth tightened again at the declaration of entitlement in her words. Her protest should have been like a match to his anger, and yet it gave rise to a quite different emotion. It was an emotion he should not let himself be feeling, but his eyes, his senses, were hungry to revisit it.

Memory flooded over him. The last time his eyes had held her she had been lying naked in his arms, sated from passion, her skin like silk against his body, her hair a glorious swathe across his shoulders, her mouth pressed against the wall of his bare chest, her exhausted limbs tangled with his…

And yet when he’d awoken from the overpowering sleep that had claimed him she had been gone, vanished into thin air.

Only to reappear now, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere.

I can’t let her walk out on me again…

The words were inside his head and he knew he should wipe them away. He knew he should send her packing. He knew exactly what he should say to Gerald Grantham’s daughter.

He knew it. But he could not say it. Not for all the will in his body and in mind.

Instead, as if he were possessed by a force he could not resist, he felt his muscles start to loosen, his shoulders ease back, and then he heard the words that came from his mouth. Words he knew with every rational part of his mind he should not be saying, but which were coming from a place inside him where reason held no sway. There was only an instinct as old as time itself and just as powerful.

Not to let her walk out on him again…

‘Then perhaps,’ he heard himself saying, ‘we can come to an alternative arrangement…’

Talia stared at him. Her senses were reeling. She was floored…in shock…mesmerised.

She had thrust her way into this inner sanctum to which that snooty PA had been determined to bar her entry, and then, as she’d stared at the man jolting to his feet at her entry, she had realised just who it was who stood before her. It was impossible to recover from this truly unexpected outcome.

She could barely countenance the brutal demand he’d made of her to pay rent in order to stay on in their own home, though she did understand on a rational level that the villa was part of the spoils of his acquisition of what was left of her father’s once mighty business empire.

She had tried to ignore the leap in her senses as her eyes had clung to him in the custom-tailored suit that sheathed his lean body, the dark tie with the discreet gold tie pin, the gold links at his cuffs, the leather strap of that exorbitantly expensive watch she’d noticed the night they’d met. Still, his long-limbed pose was lithe and it radiated power—the kind of power that came from wealth, the way her father’s had.

Yet Luke—Luke Xenakis, she reminded herself forcibly, of XL Holdings—had pursued her father’s ailing company with a power that had nothing to do with his wealth. A power that he could exert over her with a mere flick of those dark lidded eyes, a twist of that sensual mouth…

She felt herself almost swaying as memories assaulted her: his arms tightening around her, his mouth opening hers to his, his hands gliding over her body that had trembled at his silken touch…

With a silent groan she tore her mind away. What use were those memories here, in this austere office, with its views out over the glacial alpine lake and the jagged, snow-capped mountains soaring all around, as icy as the coldness in the eyes that had once burned with heat for her?

She felt something wither inside her under the cold indifference of his gaze, and knew she must banish from her memory the night she had spent with him, with this man she had given herself to so gloriously and so freely—the man who had thrown open the gate of her prison, offering her a beguiling glimpse of the freedom and bliss that could be hers.

As always, her prison doors had closed on her and were still shut. For now, as then, her first responsibility must be to her mother, to protect her from the catastrophe that had engulfed them with her father’s ruin. She must protect her from blows she could not cope with yet, and soften the final blow of losing her last refuge from the bleak poverty she was going to have to face.

She knew she must not run from Luke in an effort to try to end the torment of seeing him again and feeling his coldness towards her, and nor should she throw herself at him to beg him to listen to why she’d had to leave him as she had, though she desperately wanted to do both. She must accept whatever he offered her if it helped protect her mother just a little longer.

She forced herself to focus on what he was saying, to try to make sense of it. ‘What…what do you mean?’

She saw a veil come down over his eyes—another layer of inscrutable protection. He was so close to her and yet so infinitely far away. Something ached inside her at the distance between them now. With every instinct in her being she knew that he had not forgiven her for walking out on him that morning, leaving him after such a night as they had shared.

For a moment she wanted to cry out, to tell him why she had left like that, to try and make him understand that her life had never been hers to live as she wanted.

That it still wasn’t.

Whatever ‘alternative arrangement’ Luke had in mind, she’d have to go along with it—if it was the only way to let her mother go on living at the villa she had no choice. She had to buy the time that she so desperately needed to get her mother to face the brutal truth of how they had to live now—time to find a cheap place to move to, to get herself a job and earn money for the food they were going to eat from now on…

Her tired mind fogged as she made herself listen to what he was saying.

‘I may have a job for you.’

She frowned.

‘You told me you were an interior designer,’ he went on. ‘Are you only residential or do you have commercial experience?’

She blinked, remembering instantly the conversation they’d had, brief though it had been, as they’d introduced themselves to each other.

But we left out the most important information.

She gave a slight nod, swallowing with a dry throat.

‘Very well. In that case, I’m embarking on a new business venture—a potential refurbishment project—your skills might come in useful to me. If so…’ he was watching her speculatively through those veiled lashes of his ‘…I would accept your work in lieu of rent—if that is agreeable to you.’

Talia stared. The hope that had flared so pathetically briefly when he had first said there would be no problem in her staying on at the villa—before naming his price for that—sparked into life again.

‘Yes! Yes, of course—’

The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. The fact she would be working for the man who had brought down her father, who now owned everything that he had once possessed, was irrelevant.

She saw him sit back, cross one leg over the other and steeple his long fingers—fingers that had once trailed through her loosened hair and skimmed the contours of her naked body…

She dragged her mind away and stifled the inner voice that was telling her she was insane even to think of working for a man she had spent such a night with and who was now regarding her as nothing more than an employee.

But I have no choice in the matter. If he is offering me a job I have to take it—I have to! If it lets Mum stay on in the villa… If it buys me time…

She swallowed again. ‘When…when do I start?’

She watched him smooth a hand over his thigh in a controlled, leisurely fashion, his eyes never leaving her, revealing nothing of what might be behind that leaden gaze.

‘I’m flying out at the end of the week. Meet me at Heathrow,’ he informed her.

Consternation filled Talia’s face. ‘Flying out? Where?’

‘The Caribbean. I’ll be there a fortnight—so will you.’

Violently, she shook her head. A fortnight? ‘I couldn’t! Impossible!’

It would be impossible to spend two weeks with Luke—and in the very place they had fantasised about that night together. About running away to a sun-drenched tropical island, a palm-fringed beach, with no cares or responsibilities or prison doors to stop her…

The cruelty of it mocked her. Mocked her with the torment of the prospect of having to be with him again as he was now—so cold, so distant…

She saw him shrug again—a gesture of indifference. And that was all he felt for her now, she knew.

‘In which case be out of the Marbella villa next week.’

Talia shut her eyes as if she could shut out the reality of this situation. How could she turn down this offer he was making her? She couldn’t. She had no choice.

Luke was speaking again. ‘You can have twenty-four hours to make your decision. Phone my PA when you’ve made it.’

He uncrossed his legs, extending them under the wide mahogany desk, and reached for his keypad. Talia swallowed. It was a signal that she was being dismissed.

Numbly, she walked from the office.

Behind her, Luke lifted his gaze as she walked out. She could not have spelt out more clearly how repugnant she found the notion of spending time with him.

Memory stabbed at him again of how they had talked on that amazing, unforgettable night together, sated with passion, wound in each other’s arms. Talked of taking off to the Caribbean together…

But it had never happened, had it? She had never had the slightest intention of going anywhere with him, of spending a single further night with him.

She used me—and left me. Had what she wanted of me and walked out.

As the door closed behind her his face darkened. Was he clinically insane to have offered her a job? Actually invited her to go with him to the place that mocked him in his taunting memories? Why the hell had he done it?

Answers stirred in the deep recesses of his mind but he silenced them. They were too dangerous to acknowledge.

CHAPTER FOUR

CAREFULLY, TALIA SAT herself down in the wide leather first-class seat on the plane, feeling tense and strained. Luke had taken the window seat and had immediately snapped open his laptop. He was taking as little notice of her as he had when she’d joined him in the First-Class Lounge, where he had merely glanced at her and nodded briefly.

Inside her chest she could feel her heart thudding. Seeing him again, even knowing who he was and what he had done, was still an ordeal.

But it’s an ordeal I’m going to have to bear. I have to bear it just as I have to bear everything else. Because I don’t have any choice in the matter.

She didn’t—and she knew she didn’t. She had known all through that gruelling twenty-four hours Luke had allowed her to make her decision that there was only one answer she could give. She had to take his job offer. If it was the only way to stop herself and her mother being summarily evicted from the Marbella villa she had to take it. That was all there was to it.

And when she’d broken the news to her mother she had only felt that decision reinforced.

As she fastened her seat belt she deliberately made herself remember the expression on her mother’s face when, on her return from Switzerland, she’d sat down on her mother’s bed and told her that they could stay on in the villa for the time being. As her mother’s fearful and haggard face had lit with relief Talia had gone on to tell her the exciting news that she’d been offered an interior design job. The only downside was that it would take her to the Caribbean for a fortnight.

Her mother’s expression had faltered momentarily, then she had rallied. ‘You mustn’t worry about me a bit! Maria will look after me while you’re away. And it’s just what you need—a chance to use your talents! I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time—it won’t be all work, will it? Oh, I do envy you!’ Maxine Grantham’s eyes had softened. ‘It’s such a romantic place, the Caribbean! Of course your father never liked it…’

Her voice had wavered for a moment, and then she’d become momentarily reminiscent.

‘I had a boyfriend once, you know, when I was a teenager. He talked of sailing to every island there—’ She had broken off, then made her tone suddenly hopeful. ‘Oh, my darling, perhaps you’ll meet someone special there! Oh, that would be too wonderful! To be romanced beneath a tropical moon!’

Talia had changed the subject, but she’d not been able to banish her mother’s words from her head.

‘Romanced beneath a tropical moon…’

Memory had struck her again—but they were memories of what had never happened. She had never flown off with Luke that morning after their searing night together—never fled with him as she had so longed to do.

She had felt her thoughts shift and rearrange themselves. If she took this job with him, flew to the Caribbean… Hope, like a beguiling spirit, had welled within her. Was it possible? Could it be possible…?

Could I have a second chance with him? Dare I hope for the romantic escape we should have had?

She had felt hope strengthen, take wings. Longing had filled her.

Yet now, as she sat beside him on the plane, only anguish filled her. Her mother’s words mocked her. Indeed, her own longings were mocking her.

At her side, Luke was focussed on his laptop, a faint frown of concentration between his eyes, clearly not paying the slightest heed to her presence. She felt the anguish stab at her. She knew she must subdue these dangerous, forbidden thoughts that came unbidden, but they were impossible to banish—especially the one thought that lingered, with a temptation that she felt clinging to her like a fine mesh of gold.

What if being in the Caribbean with Luke could bring them together again? What if what had happened after that party could happen again? What if he turned to her now and, instead of cold indifference, she saw in his eyes the warmth she longed for…?

‘Champagne, madam?’

A stewardess was hovering with pre-flight drinks. With a start, Talia shook her head, taking an orange juice instead. Luke merely waved the tray away, not even looking up. That ache of anguish came again, silencing the pointless flare of hope that had fluttered so uselessly just a second ago.

With a silent sigh, she reached for her paperback, wanting her thoughts silenced, wanting to be diverted by something—anything that might get her through what lay ahead.

Hope was impossible—only torment was certain. Torment and regret.

I threw it away. I threw away my chance of seizing the happiness he promised me. And I walked out back to my prison.

The print in the paperback hazed and blurred. But what use was it for her to weep for what she had done? She had had to do it—nothing else had been possible.

Bleakly, she went on reading, numbing herself as best she could through the long flight. Luke barely spoke to her, and she was grateful—and yet his silence hammered nail after nail into her, showing her just how great was the distance between them.

No trace of intimacy. No trace of anything at all.

The same impersonal indifference continued once they had landed, and Talia spent the journey from the airport gazing out through the window of the chauffeur-driven car they’d climbed into.

The lush green of the island entranced her, along with the vivid glow of the setting sun, and when, after forty minutes or so, the car wound its way along a paved drive to draw up at a large house, she was happy to get out and gaze around her, feeling the humid warmth engulf her like a soft cashmere shawl after the chill of the climate-controlled car interior.

‘Oh, this is beautiful!’ she could not stop herself exclaiming as she gazed around at the lush gardens, with splashes of vivid colour from the tropical flowers all about.

She got no acknowledgement from Luke, who was striding indoors, so she followed him in. She’d wondered if they were heading for a hotel, but this was clearly a private villa. The large atrium-style hall reached up to high rafters, a reception room opened beyond, and there was a mahogany staircase sweeping upstairs. Staff appeared out of nowhere, murmuring in an island lilt, taking their suitcases upstairs, and Talia’s bulky portfolio case and art kit.

She hesitated, not knowing what she should do, and Luke, striding towards a door at the side of the hall, turned his head.

‘We’ll be dining in an hour. Don’t keep me waiting.’

It was all he said before he disappeared into a room in which Talia could glimpse a desk and IT equipment. He shut the door behind him with a decisive click.

With a sigh, Talia followed the luggage upstairs.

Bleakness filled her, and a weariness that came not only from the long flight. It went much deeper than that…

I’ve lost him—lost him for ever… And I must abandon any hope of winning him back.

She had to accept what Luke was making so chillingly clear—he had no interest in her any longer. Not as the woman she’d been at that party. There could be no second chance.

Wearily, she showered and started to get ready. A maid had unpacked for her, and as Talia selected a dress to wear she deliberately chose one her father had approved of. He had always wanted her to wear only fussy, over-styled clothes, and this knee-length dress in a pastel shade of pale blue did not suit her—but it would signal to Luke that she was well aware she was no longer of any personal interest to him. From now on she must remember that she was here only to work. Nothing more than that.

A tightness clutched around her heart, but there was nothing she could do about it.

He doesn’t want me any more.

That was the truth—bleak, unvarnished—and she had to face it.

Luke sat at the head of the long table in the villa’s dining room, his gaze focusing down the table to where Talia was sitting, immobile and expressionless. His face tightened. Inside him he felt the emotions he’d become all too familiar with, scything inside him. How could he still find her so beautiful?

Just as she had that day in his office in Lucerne, she looked nothing like the way she had at that party—there was no wanton wildness about her at all, no tightly sheathed body, no exposed shoulders and bare arms, no swaying walk from five-inch heels.

Now, she was dressed for the evening, in a knee-length cocktail dress that was high-necked and long-sleeved—as if, he thought with an illogical spurt of anger, she were deliberately hiding her figure from him. Her hair was caught in the same plain coil at the back of her head that it had been in on the flight, and she had not put on any make-up, let alone jewellery.

A thought flickered in his mind. Maybe there wasn’t any jewellery left for her to wear…

After all, she couldn’t even afford to pay rent on a single one of Gerald Grantham’s many properties. There probably wasn’t much jewellery these days.

She would be feeling the lack of it.

His eyes flickered over her, unconsciously changing her concealing gown to something much more to his taste. Something that would show her voluptuous cleavage, ripe for adornment with something glittering and expensive.

He tore his mind away. She wasn’t here to look alluring. That was the last thing he should want her to do. It had been hard enough to have her sitting beside him hour after hour on the flight over and make himself blank her presence. It had been next to impossible not to turn his head and drink in that beauty that had caught his breath as it did again now, even when she was wearing the unflattering dress. But he must not yield to such a dangerous temptation.

She’s here to work, to earn the right to go on living in a villa she can no longer afford.

It was time to remind her of that. Even more, to remind himself.

The staff were setting plates in front of them and pouring wine as Luke spoke. ‘I’ll be visiting the site first thing tomorrow morning,’ he said abruptly, lifting his fork and starting to eat. He was hungry after the change in time zone and it was past midnight on his body clock. ‘Because of the heat and the jet lag we’ll make an early start.’

He saw her swallow and take a drink from her glass. ‘Where is the site?’ she asked. ‘And what kind of property is it?’

It seemed to be an effort for her to speak, and that annoyed him. Why she should be radiating tension on all frequencies was beyond him. She was the one who’d rejected him. It had been her choice to leave, not his.

It was pointless to wonder, yet again, whether he was clinically insane to have brought her out here with him. He’d oscillated continuously in the twenty-four hours he’d given her to make her mind up, between cancelling his impulsive offer and raising the stakes on it. When she’d walked up to him in the airport lounge he’d felt that toxic mix of emotion writhe in him again, and he’d been plunged into confusion once more.

It filled him still, but he was hammering it down, refusing to face it. He had been insane to bring her here—truly mad to subject himself to her presence—but it was too late to change his mind. She was here and he would have to deal with it. Whatever strength of mind it took, he had to make this Caribbean project work and then get on with the rest of his life.

I can make myself indifferent to her. I can expose myself to her presence and get her out of my damn system.

His jaw set. That was what he must focus on. This time he would set the finish date: she’d stay here for a fortnight, work solidly to pay her rent, and would leave when he dismissed her. This time he would call the shots—not her.

And by the time she left—had been dismissed by him—he would have worked her out of his system. She would mean nothing to him and he would watch her being despatched from his life, on his terms, with all the indifference he was currently trying to present to her. But by then it would be genuine indifference—not the feigned, deliberate impassivity he was treating her with now.

He answered her finally, in the same clipped tone of voice he’d used for all their brief exchanges so far.

‘It’s a hotel in the south of the island, where the Caribbean coastline meets the Atlantic. It’s where the hurricanes hit if they reach this far. As they did last year.’

She’d started to eat, but looked up as he spoke.

He went on dryly. ‘Don’t worry, we’re out of hurricane season now. But last year the tip of the island was struck by a particularly vicious one—climate change is, as you probably know, fuelling their force and their frequency. The area we’re visiting got a hammering.’

‘Is the hotel still worth refurbishing?’ she asked frowningly.

‘That’s what I’m checking out,’ he said. Dryness had turned to terseness.

She was speaking again, her voice diffident, as if she were unsure whether to speak at all, and that irritated him more.

‘How badly damaged is it?’ she asked.

‘The external construction has borne up well—it was built to resist wind shear. But the interior has been blasted totally. It needs complete renovation.’

For the first time there was a spark of animation in her face, lightening her features. ‘What do you have in mind?’ she asked.

Luke’s mouth thinned. ‘Surprise me,’ he said flatly.

He was aware that he was supressing a stab of emotion he did not want to allow admittance. That the spark of animation in her expression which had brightened her eyes, giving her a glow for the first since she’d joined him in the airport lounge, had kicked at something inside him. For a few seconds she had looked as she had that first evening—with her eyes alight, responding to him, desiring him…

He repelled the memory. No point remembering that night, however much it hammered in his brain. It was over. Done. It wasn’t coming back.

She was replying. ‘I have to work to the client’s brief,’ she said tightly. There was no animation in her reply to his crushing rebuff.

Her father, the only client she’d been allowed to have, had been exacting in his briefs, and she had learnt long ago not to challenge him on what he wanted, or even suggest any modifications. Her father had not wanted creative input—he’d wanted docile compliance. She had produced only what he’d wanted, whatever her own opinions.

‘Well, my brief to you is to come up with your own ideas,’ Luke said indifferently.

Talia subsided, focussing once more on her meal. From the far end of the table Luke watched her close down again as she continued eating, and he said nothing more to her. She looked tired, he realised, and he felt the same way himself, jet lag having settled in.

When coffee arrived, Luke addressed her again. ‘We’ll make an early start for the site visit tomorrow morning before the day heats up too much. Wear suitable clothing—shoes for walking, not posing.’ He paused, wanting to make the point clear. ‘Remember you are here to WORK, Talia, if you want to stay on at the villa in Marbella.’

He saw her tense at the sharpness of his reminder, and something more. Had that been fear he’d just seen flash in her eyes? But why should it? He almost asked the question, his expression softening instinctively. Then that blank-eyed look was back in her face, expressing only tiredness.

‘Finish your coffee and go to bed,’ he instructed.

She did not need to be told twice. Draining her cup, she made her escape, heels clicking on the tiled floor. Luke watched her hurry out and that now familiar jab of anger came again.

She couldn’t wait to get away from him, could she?

It wasn’t the first time she hadn’t been able to wait to get away from him, was it?

The memory only reinforced his determination to use her presence in order to become indifferent to her.

But what if it makes you want her more…?

Talia stared around her at the scene of devastation. There were palm trees felled by the hundred-mile-an-hour winds that had uprooted them like matchsticks, and the ground was strewn with branches and vegetation, including seaweed and sand from the beach.

The hotel itself looked as if it had been blasted. Roof tiles lay smashed on the ground, window frames were hanging loose, mosquito screens falling off. She was glad that she was wearing strong rubber-soled shoes and long olive green trousers. There was shattered glass in places, too, and thick palm fronds with sharp edges.

Silently, Luke handed her a hard hat, donning one himself.

‘Take care,’ was all he said to her as he headed indoors.

He’d taken little notice of her on the way here—this time in a high-wheeled four-by-four—just as he had the previous day. It was as if he were blanking her deliberately, and she could do nothing but accept it—and respond in kind. She was grateful, if nothing else, that she was able to mirror his obvious indifference to her. He was treating her as someone he’d hired to do a job of work for him. Nothing personal…nothing intimate.

There was a heaviness inside her that was not just tiredness or jet lag. It had been so stupid of her to have any idiotic hope that Luke might be willing to make a fresh start with her. No, whatever they’d had was over. All that was important now was earning the rent to keep her mother at the villa at Marbella. The doctor’s warning meant she could not risk her mother’s health—she was too fragile, in body and mind. And her dangerously weakened heart—

She sheered her mind away, felt anguish slicing through her with a painful jagged edge.

She had lost all claim to anything personal with Luke. That was all over now—brief as it had been. She’d walked out on him. Now all she was to him was a temporary employee. And that was what she had to remember. She was here to sell her interior design skills in exchange for rent, that was all.

Keep it professional. He doesn’t want anything else than that. He’s made that brutally clear.

As she trailed after him, picking her way through the debris, and then stepped inside the building, she heard herself gasp in shock and dismay at the ravages within. Furniture was overturned, curtains were hanging off their rails, crockery was smashed, and there was a fetid smell of hot, humid, overpowering damp. The place had clearly been drenched, both by the pounding rain and the storm-surge of the sea, and even in the months since the hurricane it had not dried out.

She followed Luke across the huge atrium, her heart sinking at the destruction all around her, stepping carefully through the debris on the floor—bits of furniture, shards of crockery, shreds of curtains, wind-strewn sand—gritty under the soles of her shoes. Dismay filled her. How could anyone think to make something of this place again? Surely the wreckage was complete and it was impossible to restore?

All she wanted to do was get out of there as fast as she could. There was nothing worth saving. The whole place was rotting.

Gingerly, watching every step she took across the littered broken flooring, trying not to inhale the gagging smell of damp and decay, she made her way towards the arching curve of the far side of the atrium where it opened onto the gardens—or what had once been the gardens.

Avoiding a louvered ceiling-height shutter, hanging from its hinges, she stepped out onto the terrace beyond, lifting her eyes and blinking in the bright light after the odoriferous gloom of the interior.

And her breath caught again, her eyes widening in amazement.

The garden might be strewn with palm trees, and vegetation had been hurled across the paths and lawns, but in this lush climate Nature had reclaimed her domain, throwing out vines and foliage to soften the fallen trunks, and vivid blossoms, crimson and white and vermillion pink, to festoon the emerald greenery. And beyond—oh, beyond glistened the brilliance of the azure sea, dazzling in the hot sun. The whole scene was radiant with light and vivid colour.

‘It’s fantastic!’ she breathed in wonder.

She could see in an instant why the hotel had been built here, right at the sea’s edge, fringed with sand so silver she could barely look at it in the bright sunlight. The contrast with the rank, ruined interior could not have been greater. Talia could feel her spirits lift, her face light up with pleasure at the sight.

‘Not bad, is it?’ Luke had stepped up beside her. His voice was dry and he was gazing around.

She turned to him. There had been something in his voice, in its very understatedness, that made her exclaim, ‘I can see why you want it! It’s worth any price!’

His eyes came to rest on her and she could see that for a second, just the barest second, he reeled. But then his gaze shuttered and she could tell that he was deliberately blanking her again.

‘I don’t get sentimental over projects,’ he said tersely. ‘That doesn’t make me money. What makes me money is buying something at a good price and adding value. That’s the opportunity here. The company that owns it wants shot of it, and if I can get it at the right price, and get the refurb costings right, it will make me money. That’s all I’m interested in.’

How sad, Talia thought. What a shame that this place would be all about money. Where was his heart? Where was his soul? Where was the man she’d spent that incredible night with? The one who had lit up her whole world with his ideas, his passion, his determination?

‘Even at the lowest possible cost a refurb will be expensive. More so than a new build because of the clearance costs.’

He glanced at her again. ‘Go around the place—and watch your step. Meet me back here in forty-five minutes. Don’t keep me waiting.’

He strode off, heading down to the shore, already on his phone.

Talia watched him go, watched his assured, powerful stride carving through the debris in the devastated gardens. There was a heaviness inside her. His blunt words had had a bleak familiarity to them. She knew that attitude, all right. It was her father’s. Minimum cost, maximum profit. That was all he’d cared about, too.

It was chilling to see it echoed in Luke.

Then, with a little shake of her head, as if to clear all such thoughts from it, she went back inside and started her tour.

She fished out her notebook from her tote and started to jot things down—rough measurements to begin with, and then a sketchy layout of the ground floor guest areas as she walked, watching her step, through the desolate rooms.

As she did so her mood changed. She wasn’t quite plunged automatically into professional mode, but she did find that, despite the desolation and destruction, the same lifting of her spirits was hitting her as when she’d seen the vista of the sea beyond the gardens.

If she looked past the devastation and ruin to the structure of the building she could see that this was, indeed, a beautiful space. With imagination and enthusiasm it could be made impressive again.

Ideas started to flow and her pen moved faster over the paper. She turned pages one after the other, and took copious photos on her phone of rooms and vistas.

She headed upstairs, ideas still pouring through her, a sense of excitement filling her. For the first time she was being given an opportunity to use her own creativity, to craft her own vision! Being allowed to give her ideas full rein and not have them ignored and dismissed by her father was a liberation.

Time flew by, and only when she saw Luke waiting for her down in the desolate atrium, with a dark expression on his face, did her mood crash again.

‘When I say forty-five minutes that is what I mean,’ he informed her tightly.

Talia’s apology died on her lips.

‘I’ve got some letters to dictate to you,’ he continued. ‘While you’re here you might as well do some secretarial work for me, as well. We’ll do it in the car.’

‘Er… I don’t take dictation,’ she said. It wasn’t a refusal, only a description of her secretarial limits.

‘Tough,’ he said.

She stared after him, her heart sinking. His mood was black, that was obvious, and she could only assume it was because the state of the hotel was worse than he’d realised.

As for acting as his secretary, well… She sighed inwardly. If that was what he wanted she would do her best. After all, to have stayed on at the villa paying rent would have cost her a fortune—whatever work she did here for him he was therefore entitled to, even if it wasn’t what she was trained for.

So she did the best she could, taking down his dictation as he drove. But not only did the SUV jolting over the potholed roads make it difficult to write, but the complex legalese and financial figures he dictated at high speed tested her meagre abilities to the limit. The fact that she was only exacerbating his bad mood by asking him to slow down or repeat himself was patently visible.

By the time they finally arrived back at the villa there was a headache around her skull like a steel band in full swing.

Luke turned to her. ‘There’s a government minister I have to see. Those letters need to be typed up this afternoon. There’s an office set up in the villa somewhere—the staff will show you.’

Talia nodded dumbly, heading up to her room to shower and change. Was this distant, terse man really the same man as the one she had encountered that fateful evening at the party? How could he be?

She felt her throat catch and hurried into the bathroom. Beneath the flow of water, she was only too conscious of her nakedness—a nakedness she had so briefly gloried in with the man who now looked right through her…

Memories rushed back into her head of when his gaze upon her had not been cold, nor indifferent. But these were memories she did not want and could not afford. She sighed grimly. She couldn’t afford much at all.

Enveloping herself tightly in a bath towel, she emerged, steeling herself. What did it matter if Luke now looked right through her and gave her orders and instructions as if nothing had ever happened between them? It would simply remind her of what she shouldn’t forget, even for a moment. That she was here for one purpose only—to work as he directed, so that her mother could have some reprieve from the loss of the final piece of her stricken life to which she was still so desperately clinging.

A knock sounded at the door and she went to open it. One of the soft-footed maids came in with a lunch tray, carrying it through to the balcony, on which a little table and chair had been set up under an awning. Talia threw on a sundress, and followed her.

She felt her spirits lift again in the heat and brightness after the dim cool of the air-conditioned bedroom.

Thanking the maid, she felt suddenly hungry and fell to eating. She’d hardly had time for breakfast—which had been served up here in her room—before she’d been informed that Mr Xenakis was waiting for her, and jet lag had also confused her hunger cues. Now they were fully restored, and she ate with relish the food that had been provided for her: chicken salad, cane juice, and fresh fruit.

As she ate, she gazed out at the vista. And such a vista! Now, for the first time, she could really appreciate where she was.

The villa was set on a slope, high above the sea, which was several miles away across lush countryside, and the beautiful gardens she’d seen from the carriage sweep were wrapped around the back as well.

Was that…? Ah, yes. Her eyes lit up. There was a large turquoise pool, glinting at the rear of the villa. And as she gazed in delighted appreciation she knew, instinctively, that the colour palette for her design ideas was right in front of her: the deep cobalt sea, the turquoise pool, the emerald vegetation, the vivid crimson of the bougainvillea and fragrant frangipani. All would be called upon.

Enthusiasm fired her, and she longed to make a start on her colour boards and sketch out the vision that danced inside her head. Her ideas began to fizz and bubble in her imagination.

But that was not what she’d been instructed to do this afternoon. There were Luke’s letters to type up first.

The office she was shown into by the stately butler—whose name, he informed her upon enquiry, was Fernando—was chilled with air-conditioning and had no outside light coming in. The windows were high set, with venetian blinds over them. An array of high-tech equipment hummed to one side, and a huge PC sat on the desk.

She took her place in front of it and got out her notebook. She sighed, hoping she would be able to decipher what she’d scrawled so hectically.

It proved hard going, and she knew, with a sinking heart, that she was making a poor fist of it. She did her best, all the same, though she was painstakingly slow, not being able to touch-type, and found the keyboard complicated to operate when it came to tabulating the many figures Luke had thrown at her.

Finally, she was done, though there were gaps and queries in every letter and attachment. She could only hope that Luke would make allowances for the fact that she was not a trained secretary and they had been going over a bumpy road while she was trying to write it all down.

The headache, which had cleared over lunch in the fresh air, was now back with a vengeance. With a final sigh of abject relief, she closed down the word processing software and got up, her back stiff and sore from hours of hunching over the keyboard.

Then her face brightened.

The pool! She would freshen up with a dip—that, surely, would clear her head and loosen her stiff limbs. And she would ask the Fernando if she could have a coffee, and a long juice drink.

A handful of minutes later she was plunging head-first into blissfully warm water, joyfully dipping her head under the water to feel her hair stream wetly down her back. Her spirits soared. Oh, this was joyous! She splashed around, frolicking like a child, delighting in the diamond sprays of water catching the late-afternoon sunshine, then pushed off the side, plunging in a duck-dive to the tiled bottom of the pool, dappled with sunlight. Then:

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

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