Claiming His Hidden Heir
Abonelik- Hacim: 160 sayfa. 3 illüstrasyonlar
- Tür: kısa aşk romanları, modern yabancı edebiyat, erotik romanlarDüzetme
“Did you forget to tell me about my baby?”
He won’t be denied his heir!
Buttoned-up PA Cecelia Andrews’s resignation released her secret raw desire for her demanding playboy boss, Luka Kargas. One year after his callous dismissal, Cecelia’s hiding an even greater secret—their daughter! She’ll never let coldhearted Luka make her daughter feel unwanted. But when Luka uncovers her deceit, there’s no escaping the consequences of her passionate surrender...
CAROL MARINELLI recently filled in a form asking for her job title. Thrilled to be able to put down her answer, she put ‘writer’. Then it asked what Carol did for relaxation and she put down the truth—‘writing’. The third question asked for her hobbies. Well, not wanting to look obsessed, she crossed her fingers and answered ‘swimming’—but, given that the chlorine in the pool does terrible things to her highlights, I’m sure you can guess the real answer!
Also by Carol Marinelli
Their Secret Royal Baby
Their One Night Baby
Billionaires & One-Night Heirs miniseries
The Innocent’s Secret Baby
Bound by the Sultan’s Baby
Sicilian’s Baby of Shame
Ruthless Royal Sheikhs miniseries
Captive for the Sheikh’s Pleasure
Christmas Bride for the Sheikh
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.
Claiming His Hidden Heir
Carol Marinelli
ISBN: 978-1-474-07204-5
CLAIMING HIS HIDDEN HEIR
© 2018 Carol Marinelli
Published in Great Britain 2018
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.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
Version: 2020-03-02
MILLS & BOON
Before you start reading, why not sign up?
Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!
Or simply visit
Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.
For my great friend Frances Housden
An inspiring woman and wonderful writer.
Love always
Carol xxx
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Extract
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
HE WOULD NOT be hiring Cecelia Andrews.
Property magnate Luka Kargas had already decided that Candidate Number Two would be his new personal assistant.
‘Ms Andrews is here for her interview,’ Hannah, his current PA, informed him.
‘There’s no need for me to meet her,’ Luka responded. ‘I’ve decided to go with Candidate Two.’
‘Luka!’ Hannah reproached, a little braver now that she was leaving. ‘At least have the decency to see her. She’s been through two extensive interviews with me, and as well as that it’s pouring outside. She had to come across London in the middle of a storm.’
‘Not interested,’ Luka said, because he didn’t buy into sob stories. ‘It’s a waste of my time.’
And a slice of Luka’s time was precious indeed.
But then Luka suddenly remembered that Ms Andrews had been personally recommended by Justin, a contact he wanted to keep onside.
‘Fine, send her in,’ Luka said, deciding to see her briefly but then to get rid of her as soon as he could.
Impatient fingers drummed the desk as he waited, and then Candidate Three was shown in.
‘Ms Andrews.’ Luka stood and shook her right hand, noticing that on her left she wore an engagement ring.
Nothing would induce him to hire her, for she would have to have the most patient fiancé in the world to tolerate the ridiculous hours she would have to devote to him.
And everyone knew his reputation.
He just had to give her a few minutes of his time so he could tell Justin that he had interviewed her but gone with another candidate.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Take a seat.’
Cecelia knew that although he had called her Ms Andrews he was awaiting correction and an invitation to call her by her first name.
There would be no such invitation to do so.
Ms Andrews would do just fine, Cecelia had decided.
She had read about him, thoroughly researched him, and even been told by his current PA during two prolonged interviews about his bad-boy ways.
‘You would have to deal with his girlfriends, or rather his exes,’ Hannah had explained. ‘It can be quite a juggling act at times. Luka works hard all week and then works just as hard breaking hearts at the weekend.’
Cecelia had seen it all before, and not just through her work. She abhorred the rich, debauched kind of lifestyle he led and with good reason—her mother, Harriet, had lived and died the same way.
Still, Luka Kargas’s morals were his own concern, not hers. Cecelia had her sights set on working for royalty and he was a step in the right direction, that was all.
‘He has a yacht, currently moored in Xanero,’ Hannah had said.
‘That’s where he’s from?’ Cecelia checked, although she had found that out in her research.
‘Yes, though you won’t be expected to travel there with him and you won’t be involved with the family business there. Luka keeps that strictly separate.’
She would not be falling for him, Cecelia had reassured both his incumbent PA and herself. The only thing the career-minded Cecelia wanted from Luka Kargas was his name on her résumé and the glowing reference that, after a year’s hard work, he would surely provide.
But now she had finally met him, and as his long olive fingers had closed around hers, the very sensible Cecelia’s conviction that she would not be attracted to him in the least had wavered somewhat.
‘Hannah said you got caught in the storm,’ Luka frowned.
The skies had darkened just over an hour ago.
Luka, from his vantage point of the fortieth floor, had watched the black clouds gather and roll over London.
Candidate Two had arrived drenched and had asked Hannah for a ten-minute delay before proceeding with the interview.
Usually that would have been enough to ensure a black mark against her name but, having watched the storm himself, Luka had accepted the excuse and the rather bedraggled candidate.
Cecelia Andrews was far from bedraggled, though.
She wore a dark grey suit that was immaculate, her blonde hair, worn up, was sleek and smooth, while her make-up was both discreet and in place.
Hannah had insinuated that a drowned rat sat in the entrance yet the woman who sat before him was far from that.
‘I got caught up in the storm,’ Cecelia said, ‘but I wasn’t caught out—I heeded the warnings.’
And she might want to start heeding them now, she thought, for the impact of him on her senses was like nothing she had ever known.
He wore a dark suit and tie and his crisp white shirt accentuated his olive skin; he hadn’t shaved that morning.
The air in the room had changed, as if the charge that had lit the sky for the past hour had joined them.
Luka Kargas was everything her aunt had warned her about, and though she had told herself she could handle it, and that there was no way she could ever be attracted to someone like him, Cecelia hadn’t allowed for the impact of Luka close up.
They skipped through the formalities, both determined to get this over and done with and move on with the day.
‘Hannah will have explained that the hours are long,’ Luka said.
‘She did.’
‘Sixteen-hour days at times.’
‘Yes.’ Cecelia nodded.
‘And there’s an awful lot of travel,’ Luka said. ‘Though for all that the working week is hell, you do get every weekend off.’
She smiled a tight, slightly disbelieving smile.
‘You do,’ Luka said, as he read those full lips. ‘Come Friday night, the entire weekend is yours.’
‘Though I’m guessing I wouldn’t be out of here by five p.m.?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Usually around ten.’
So not really the entire weekend to herself, Cecelia thought as his black eyes scanned through her paperwork. ‘Why are you finishing up with Justin?’
‘Because I didn’t want to live in Dubai.’
‘I go there a lot,’ Luka said, ‘which would mean, by default, so would you.’
‘That’s fine. I just don’t want to live there,’ Cecelia said, and she knew, she just knew, he was alluding to the fact she had a fiancé whose needs would have impacted on her decision.
He was right.
Gordon wouldn’t consider it.
‘Do you speak Greek?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Cecelia said, suddenly hoping it was a prerequisite for the role and that this torture would therefore come to an end. It was torture because her stomach seemed to be folding in on itself and she all of a sudden could feel the weight of her breasts. She had never had such a violent reaction to another person, though of course it was one-sided.
Luka Kargas looked thoroughly bored.
‘Do you speak any other languages?’ he asked.
‘Some French,’ Cecelia said, even though she spoke it very well and had both lived and worked in France for a year.
Anyway, he didn’t want her French, whether a little or a lot of it, for he screwed up his nose.
Good, because Cecelia had now decided that she did not want this job.
She liked safe, and for very good reasons.
Cecelia liked her world ordered, and ten minutes alone with Luka Kargas had just rocked hers.
His black eyes were mesmerising and his brusque indifference had her re-crossing her legs.
Until this moment, sex had been a perfectly pleasant experience, if sometimes a bit of a chore.
Now, though, she sat across from a man who made her think of it.
Actually sit and think about torrid, impromptu sex at two p.m. on a Monday afternoon, and that could never do.
‘Ms Andrews...’
‘Cecelia,’ she corrected, but only because she didn’t want to sound like some uptight spinster.
And she wasn’t.
She was engaged to be married, and right now she found herself desperately trying to hold onto that thought.
Oh, this really would never do!
‘Cecelia.’ He nodded. ‘I see that you don’t have any real experience in the hospitality industry.’
‘No, I don’t,’ Cecelia said. ‘Not a jot.’
‘A jot?’ His black eyes looked up and met her green ones and she saw that his were not actually black but the deepest of browns.
‘I don’t have any experience in the hospitality industry, none at all.’
‘And I note that you wear an engagement ring.’
‘Excuse me...’ Cecelia frowned ‘...but you can’t comment on that.’
He waved his hand dismissively.
Luka read her emergency contact and saw that it wasn’t her fiancé but, in fact, her aunt.
And she intrigued him a touch. ‘Are you engaged?’
‘Yes.’ Cecelia bristled. ‘Not that it’s any of your business.’
‘Cecelia, if you are considering working for me, then you might as well know from the outset that I am not known for my political correctness. I’ll tell it to you straight—I don’t want a PA who is in the throes of planning a big wedding, neither I don’t want someone who is going to have to dash off at six because her fiancé is sulking.’
Cecelia’s jaw tightened because at times Gordon did just that.
‘Mr Kargas, my personal life is not your concern and, let me assure you, it never will be.’
Never, because she was not taking the job!
He heard the double meaning behind her words and almost smiled but then checked himself.
‘Come over here,’ he said, and stood up and headed to the floor-to-ceiling windows.
It was like no interview she had ever experienced before, Cecelia thought as she stood and walked over to join him.
Gosh, he was tall.
And he smelt as if he had bathed in bergamot with a testosterone undertone.
‘See the view,’ Luka said.
‘It’s amazing.’ Cecelia nodded, looking out across a gleaming, wet and shiny London. The grey skies were starting to clear and black clouds were lined with silver but there was no rainbow that she could see.
‘It’s all yours,’ Luka said, and Cecelia frowned. ‘When you finish on a Friday, right up to Monday morning the world out there is your oyster.’ Then he looked over at her. ‘But when you’re here...’
He expected devotion. Cecelia got his meaning.
‘When can you start?’ Luka asked.
Before she declined, Cecelia took a deep breath and thought of the perks of this job—a salary that was almost twice her current one, endless travel and the Kargas name on her résumé for ever.
And then she thought of the pitfalls.
Sixty-hour weeks spent beside this stunning man.
Her attraction to him was as unexpected as it was unsettling.
She actually didn’t know what to do.
‘I’d like some time to think about it,’ Cecelia said in response to his offer.
‘Well, I’m looking for someone who trusts their own instincts and can make prompt decisions.’
Luka now wanted her working for him.
She had impressed him when he had not expected to be impressed, yet something told him that if she walked out of the door Cecelia Andrews would not be coming back.
He could feel her hesitation.
And because he was Luka Kargas he knew when to push, and how. ‘So, I’ll ask again, when can you start, Cecelia?’
Never! Her instincts screamed.
Yet she had so badly wanted this job and the challenge it would bring and, though he was undoubtedly attractive, Cecelia knew herself well enough to be certain she would never get involved with anyone at work.
‘Now,’ Cecelia said, shocked at her own decision. ‘I can start now.’
‘Then welcome aboard.’
And as he shook her hand, Cecelia told herself she could handle it.
CHAPTER ONE
LUKA, AFTER CAREFUL consideration I’ve decided...
Waking just before her alarm went off, Cecelia lay listening to the hiss of bus doors opening on the street outside her London flat and working out how best to resign.
And when to do it?
Did she get it over and done with in the morning? Or wait until the end of the day to tell him that she would not be renewing her contract?
Most people would say she was mad to quit.
The pay was amazing, the travel wonderful, if exhausting, but in the eleven months she had worked for Luka, Cecelia had hit the limit on her primness radar.
He was a playboy in the extreme.
And that wasn’t some vague, unsourced opinion.
It was fact.
Cecelia ran his diary after all!
Quite simply, she couldn’t do it any more and so on Friday, as Luka had headed to the rooftop to swan off in his chopper for a debauched weekend in France, Cecelia had reached for her phone and accepted a six-month contract as personal assistant to an esteemed and elderly foreign diplomat.
While the money and perks would be worse in her new job, the peace of mind it would bring was, to Cecelia, worth its weight in gold.
Only as she reached for her phone to check the time did Cecelia see the date and remember that it was her birthday.
There was never much fuss made of it and she had long since told herself to get over that fact. Her aunt and uncle, who had raised her since the age of eight, simply didn’t bother with such things and before she had died, neither had her mother.
She saw that a message had come in overnight from Luka.
Shan’t be in today, Cece. Cancel my meetings and I’ll call you later.
Cecelia ground her teeth at the annoying shortening of her name that she had repeatedly asked him to stop using. But then she frowned, because in the eleven months that she had worked for Luka he had never taken a day off. Luka had a phenomenal workload yet never missed a beat. But now, on the one day she really needed to speak to him, he wasn’t going to be there.
Cecelia wanted her resignation handed in and sorted, and for her time with Luka to be over. As well as that he had an important meeting with Mr Garcia and his entourage in NYC later today. Although it was an online meeting, it had been incredibly hard to set up and it was going to be extremely messy to cancel.
Despite the absence of her boss—in fact, because of the absence of her boss—today was shaping up to be an exceptionally busy one, and so Cecelia forced herself up and out of bed.
She showered quickly and began to get ready.
Her routines were set in stone and, despite the extensive travel and odd hours required by her job, there were certain things that never changed. She could be in Florence, New York, or home in London but these things remained—her clothes were set out the night before, as was her breakfast, which she ate before tackling her hair.
Routines were vital to Cecelia’s sense of well-being, for during the first eight years of her life, when she had lived with her mother, chaos had been the only certainty.
The reddish fire to Cecelia’s strawberry blonde mane had, courtesy of foils, been dimmed to a neutral blonde. She smoothed and sleeked out her long curls and then tied them back into a neat, low ponytail.
Next, Cecelia applied her make-up.
She didn’t wear much, but as Luka’s PA it was expected that she was always well turned out.
It wasn’t always the case. A famous actress she had once worked for had insisted that Cecelia wear no make-up whatsoever as well as extremely plain clothing. With another employer, for practical reasons, her wardrobe had mainly consisted of boots and jeans.
Cecelia’s skin was pale and needed just a dash of blusher to liven it up. She added a coat of mascara to her lashes, which enhanced her deep green eyes, but, as she did so, a rather bitchy voice coming from the radio caught her attention.
‘What on earth did she expect, getting mixed up with Luka Kargas?’
Cecelia stabbed herself in the eye with the mascara wand at the sound of her boss’s name.
It wasn’t so much that it was a surprise to hear Luka mentioned, more an annoyance that even at seven a.m. and alone in her bedroom still there was no escape from him.
Luka was extremely prominent and, although his name often graced the finance reports, his antics and bad-boy ways were regularly discussed in the tabloids and on the news.
They were having a field day discussing him now!
It would seem that he had used every last second of the weekend to create his own particular brand of havoc. A wild party had taken place aboard his yacht, currently moored off the coast of Nice, on Friday.
Cecelia sat at her dressing table, lips pursed as she heard that the raucous celebrations had continued on to Paris, where Luka and selected guests had hit the casinos. Now it was a case of tears after bedtime for some supermodel who had hoped that things might be different between herself and Luka.
Well, more fool her, then, Cecelia thought.
Everyone knew Luka’s track record with women.
But they didn’t really know Luka—there was a private side to him that no one, and certainly not his PA, had access to.
From what Cecelia could glean, Luka had led a very privileged life. His father owned a luxurious resort in Xanero. The famed Kargas restaurant there was now the flagship venue of its own very exclusive brand in several countries. Luka, though, focused more on expanding the hotel side of things and lived life very much in the fast lane. He dated at whim and discarded with ease and all too often it was Cecelia mopping up the tears or fielding calls from scorned lovers.
Yes, he was a playboy in the extreme.
And he unsettled her so.
Cecelia had once glimpsed that life.
Her mother Harriet’s death had been intensely embarrassing for her well-to-do family for she had died as she’d lived and had gone out on a high—knickers down and with the proverbial silver spoon up her nose.
Harriet had left behind a daughter with whom no one had quite known what to do. Her father’s name did not appear on the birth certificate and Cecelia had glimpsed him just once in her life.
And she never wanted to see him again.
Cecelia’s staid aunt and uncle, who had always sniffed in disapproval at Harriet’s rather bohemian existence, had, on her death, taken in the child. With tangled curls and sparkling green eyes, little Cecelia had been a mini replica of her mother, but in looks only.
The little girl had craved routine.
In fact, it had been a very young Cecelia who had kept any semblance of order in her mother’s life.
She had put out her own school uniform and taken money from her mother’s purse to ensure there was food, and she’d always got herself up in the morning and made her own way to school.
After an unconventional start, Cecelia now lived a very conventional life and was efficient and ordered. Even though she travelled the globe with her work, she was generally in bed by ten on weekdays and eleven at weekends.
She had perfectly nice friends, though none close enough to remember her birthday, and this time last year she had been engaged.
Gordon and the break-up had been the only problem she had caused for her aunt and uncle, who could not fathom why she might end things with such a perfectly decent man.
It hadn’t been Gordon’s fault, and she had told him so when she’d ended it.
It was bloody Luka’s!
Though of course Cecelia hadn’t told Gordon that.
Still, there wasn’t time to dwell on it this morning.
She pulled on her flesh-coloured underwear and then glanced out of the window where the sun split a very blue sky, and found she simply could not face putting on the navy linen suit that she had laid out last night.
To hell with it!
Given that Luka wouldn’t be in the office today, and that she wouldn’t now be sitting in on meetings, Cecelia made an unplanned diversion to her wardrobe.
She wasn’t exactly blinded by colour. But there was the dress she had bought to wear to a friend’s wedding she had recently attended.
It had been a rare impulse purchase.
It was a pale cream halter neck, which Cecelia had decided as soon as she’d left the boutique was too close to white and might offend the bride.
She loved it, though, and, maybe because it was her birthday, she decided to wear it.
While it showed rather too much of her back and arms, she took care of that with the pale lemon, sheer, bolero-style cardigan she had bought on the same day.
The dress was mid-calf-length so she didn’t bother with stockings, and then she tied on some espadrilles.
Yes, perhaps because Cecelia knew she would soon be leaving Kargas Holdings she was finally starting to relax.
As she closed the front door to her flat, Cecelia decided that despite Luka’s absence she would still be giving in her notice today. It would be far easier to do it over the phone or online.
‘You’re looking very summery,’ Mrs Dawson, her very nosy neighbour, said as she passed her in the hall. ‘Off to work?’
‘I am.’
The pale lemon bolero didn’t even make it past the escalators to the underground. It was hot and oppressive and as she stood, holding a rail, she saw that Luka’s weekend escapades had made headlines on the newspaper a commuter held.
She looked at the photo beneath the headline. It was of Luka on the deck of his yacht moving in on a sophisticated, dark-skinned beauty. His naked chest and thick black hair were dripping water over the woman and though their bodies did not touch it was an incredibly intimate shot.
Cecelia tore her eyes from the picture and stared fixedly ahead but that image of him seemed to dance on the blacked-out windows of the Tube.
Having left the underground, Cecelia walked towards the prominent high-rise building that housed Kargas Holdings. She smiled at the doorman and then entered the foyer and took the elevator. She had a special pass that allowed her to access the fortieth floor, which was Luka’s in its entirety.
There weren’t just offices and meeting rooms, there was also a gym and pool, though Cecelia couldn’t recall him using them—they were more a perk for the staff.
And there was a suite that was every bit as luxurious and as serviced as any five-star hotel. When in London, Luka often slept there when he chose to work through the night or had a particularly early morning flight.
Yes, it was his world that she entered, but knowing that he wasn’t there meant Cecelia breathed more easily today.
It was just before eight and it would seem that she had beaten Bridgette, the receptionist, to work. There were a couple of cleaners polishing windows and vacuuming and the florists had arrived, as they did each morning to tend the floral displays.
Cecelia made a coffee from the espresso machine before heading to her desk that was housed in a large area outside Luka’s vast office.
The gatekeeper, Luka called her at times, though she felt rather more like a security guard at others.
As well as greeting his clients and guests, Cecelia was the final hurdle for his scorned lovers to negotiate if they somehow made it past the security in place downstairs.
Occasionally it happened, though generally Cecelia fielded them by phone.
And there it was again, springing to mind—the sudden image of him, wet from the ocean and dripping water, and Cecelia shook her head as if to clear it.
She hung her little cardigan on a stand and was just about to take a seat when his voice caught her completely unawares.
‘Is that coffee for me, Cece?’
Cecelia swung around and there, strolling out of his office, was Luka. Apart from being unshaven there was little evidence of his wild weekend on display. He wore black pants and a white fitted shirt that showed off his toned body and his thick black hair, which, though perhaps a little tousled, still fell into perfect shape.
And he was not supposed to be here.
‘I thought you weren’t coming in today,’ Cecelia said.
‘Why would you think that?’
‘Because you texted me in the middle of the night and told me you weren’t.’
‘So I did.’
He looked at the usually poised and formal Cece caught unawares. To many it might seem no big deal—she was simply holding a coffee and wearing a summer dress. Usually she was buttoned to the neck in navy or black, but it wasn’t just her clothing that was different today.
‘Thanks,’ he said, and took from her hand the coffee she had made.
‘It’s got sugar in it,’ she warned as she took a seat at her desk, ‘and, please, it’s Cecelia, not Cece.’
‘Habit,’ he said.
‘Well, it’s a very annoying one.’
Good, Luka thought.
Her cool demeanour incensed him.
His choice of name for her was deliberate, for he loved to provoke a reaction, even if it was only mild.
‘How was your weekend?’ she asked politely, pretending of course that she had heard nothing whatsoever about it.
‘Much the same as the last,’ he answered, and then came over behind Cecelia’s desk and, to her intense annoyance, he lowered himself so that his bottom was beside her computer. ‘Do you ever get bored?’ he asked.
‘Not really,’ Cecelia lied, for she had realised she had been bored with Gordon.
He had also worked in the City and they had fallen into a pattern of meeting for drinks on Wednesday, allowing time to catch up with friends on a Friday. It had generally just been the two of them on a Saturday, followed by a vague hint of an orgasm that night and generally a boring drive on Sunday with a pub lunch somewhere.
Bu ve 399 TRY karşılığında 2 kitap daha