Kitabı oku: «Kyriakis's Innocent Mistress», sayfa 2

‘I need to be frank with you.’ He took her hands. Her first instinct was to withdraw them, but the beginnings of pity took over as he confessed, ‘My near brush with death has made me take stock of my life. I have too many regrets. My first marriage was arranged. We didn’t love each other. At the time love wasn’t important, or so I thought. There was no room in my busy life for pointless emotion. I saw emotion as a weakness. Building up my business empire was all that mattered. She—Alexandrina—died shortly after giving birth to my firstborn son, Theo.’ His mouth twisted wryly. ‘I honestly think she died to get away from me—and that’s a heavy weight on my conscience.’

He paused, as if remembering something dark that had been buried for too long and then, his voice strengthening, continued, ‘I remarried within a year. A man in his prime has certain needs, and taking a mistress entails a certain expenditure of time and effort—time that could be more profitably spent on business concerns.’

‘And taking a wife doesn’t mean spending time and effort?’ asked Bonnie, appalled.

Andreas sighed deeply. ‘I am telling you this to showyou the man Iwas then. The type of man whose first unloved and unconsidered wife died to escape him, and whose second wife eventually ran off with another man. Whose firstborn son left home as soon as he hit eighteen because—as he said—I drove him too hard, expected too much, used criticism as our only mode of conversation. I never saw him again. He left my home, refused to join the business as I had planned since his birth, so I washed my hands of him. He died of a heroin overdose in Paris five years later.’

His hands tightened on hers. ‘I am not proud of what I was. I have been a failure as a husband, as a father. As a human being. I see all this now, and I cannot tell you how deeply I regret it all. Regret all that I was, all that I was not. But most of all I regret that I have not seen my second son since he was fourteen years old—and that he has made himselfmy enemy.’

He took a deep breath. Warm darkness was closing in, the great scarlet ball of the sun sinking low on the horizon. ‘That is why I would ask you, were you to agree to be my wife, to stand by my side and give me courage, to intercede with my remaining son on my behalf. I want to get to know him, make amends if I can. I dream of turning his enmity into friendship—or, if that cannot be managed, a sense of kinship. I don’t want to leave this life having no one of my blood to mourn my passing.’

Bonnie felt her throat tighten, felt moisture gather in her eyes. She was so sorry for him. Poor old guy! On the face of it, he’d deserved all he got. But hewas obviously truly repentant over his past deeply dreadful shortcomings. His recent near death experience had opened his eyes to his failures with shocking clarity.

Surely he deserved a second chance?

But she had to make one thing clear. Gently, she withdrew her hands from his. ‘Andreas,’ she began firmly, ‘I’m fond of you.’

And she was. They’d hit it off from the start. She always gave her patients the best care she could, even if they were real miseries! But Andreas had been different—responding positively to all her medical demands, never once complaining. She tried her best to like all her charges, even if they were impossible, but with this old guy she hadn’t had to try.

‘But I can’t marry you,’ she said softly. ‘It’s immensely flattering, but in my book marriage should be more than a contract, with money changing hands. Companionship comes into it, of course, but there has to be so much more. I will promise one thing. I’ll do my utmost to try and put things right between you and your son, but you must tell me how to go about it.’

‘So what are you going to do?’ Lisa had listened in total silence as Bonnie had recounted that conversation verbatim. ‘What are you going to say to this estranged son of his? It won’t be easy—but I guess you know that.’

‘I’ll think of something,’ Bonnie replied, with a confidence she was far from feeling.

Deep down she felt thiswas a no-win situation. On the one hand, the firstborn son’s reaction to his father’s harsh idea of parenting made it no surprise that the second-born should have followed suit. But surely that didn’t excuse his apparently ruthless drive to ruin his father?Aguy had to be really mean-minded to start out on that track, and by all accounts never give up.

Quite how she’d get through to him she had no idea. But she’d promised to do what she could, and she never went back on a promise.

CHAPTER TWO

‘STAVROS!’

The sharp call cut through the searing afternoon heat, a hollow boom as the sea surged against the base of the cliffs. Suddenly feeling insecure in her resting place, a handy shady niche among the high rocks, Bonnie listened to the following spate of Greek and understood not a word, only the tone. Whoever was issuing what she suspected were orders was a guy who expected to be obeyed smartish, no questions asked. Her mouth quirked wryly. She pitied this Stavros if he was neglecting some duty or other.

Holding on to the wall of the blisteringly hot rock face, Bonnie got gingerly to her feet, stowed herwater bottle, and hitched the leather strap of her canvas bag over her head and shoulder. At least there was someone around who could point her in the right direction.

Two days ago a workhorse of a ferry had deposited her and a load of what had looked like second-hand agricultural machinery on the quayside of this tiny harbour town, its pastel-coloured squat houses clustering around the deep water inlet, backed by hills thick with gnarled and ancient olive trees.

‘It is not a tourist destination. Only the occasional backpacker visits,’ Andreas had told her. ‘From what I gather it boasts only one road, a handful of basic shops and tavernas. The lifestyle is low-key and traditional, which is why the seriously wealthy build holiday homes there, attracted by the peace and quiet. My son is one of that select number. He is there now, and my feeling is that you may find him more approachable while he is in a relaxed mood.’

If she could find him!

The mention of Dimitri Kyriakis had been rewarded with blank stares from the locals, and the widow Athena Stephanides, with whom she was lodging, courtesy of Andreas’s deep purse, had merely shrugged. ‘Sorry. I know of no one with that name.’

The only option she had was to head south, to the area where the super-rich built their luxurious hideaways. Complete, so Athena had divulged with much raising of eyebrows, with helipads and swimming pools of Olympian proportions. Then she’d clammed up, as if regretting that she’d said that much.

It would appear that the locals guarded the privacy of their wealthy incomers. And in all fairness Bonnie couldn’t really blame them, because they obviously boosted the island economy, recruiting permanent and temporary staff from amongst the close-knit island families.

So she had no choice but to head down there and knock on doors—provided she could get past security fences and prowling guard dogs! She wasn’t looking forward to it, but she had promised Andreas. Besides, she wanted to help the poor old guy, because the mistakes he’d made in the past were now deeply regretted, were troubling him, and if she could help him put them right then she was up for it.

Her idea of following the coastline and then striking inland to the southern tip of the island where the secluded villas of the mega-wealthy were located didn’t seem as brilliant now as it had when she’d pored over a rudimentary map of the island after breakfast.

She might have made better progress if she had followed the long, dusty road that led over the high spine of the island. It might have been tedious in the extreme, but it wouldn’t have been as hairy as this coastal shortcut was proving to be.

Far too many feet below her, deep green translucent water swelled and subsided. It made her feel giddy. Telling herself she wouldn’t fall into the ocean, she wasn’t that stupid, she gritted her teeth and edged forward around the outcrop, heading for what her map had told her was a small horseshoeshaped bay. From there, as far as she could make out, an unmade track led further south, skirting the central rocky spine of the island.

Successfully negotiating the obstacle, she paused, expelled the breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding, then sucked in another, deeper gulp of air. The cove below her was idyllic, but even more spectacular was the man walking along the waterline carrying driftwood.

Tall, tanned, magnificently built, his sleek musculature of wide shoulders and deep chest narrowed down to lean hips clad in shabby, ragged-hemmed denim cut-offs.

Stavros?

His long, relaxed stride halted as he turned and stared out to sea. He hadn’t seen her, clinging to the rocks high above. Suddenly it seemed imperative that she get down to him. Only to ask him to point her in the right direction for the track that would take her to her objective, of course. Conversing, if only briefly, with such a gorgeous hunk would be a bonus!

Grinning at her very natural female folly, she began to scramble on, and caught her foot in a fissure. She let out a yelp of pain, and cursed herself roundly for not looking where she was going.

Clinging awkwardly to the rock, she bent to rub the offending ankle, a slippery hank of long silvery blonde hair falling over her face as it escaped the pins that had secured it in a knot on top of her head. A sob of frustration blocked her throat as she discovered that she couldn’t put her weight on the foot.

Now how was she going to get back? Get anywhere? There was no public transport on the tiny island, and even if she could hobble—or crawl!—to the only proper road some way inland she might have to wait hours before she could thumb a lift in some passing truck back to the small fishing port where she was based.

‘Stay where you are.’

Annoyance with herself, and frustration over her self-inflicted plight, had driven the stranger on the shore below right out of her mind. But now—well, he had abandoned the driftwood and was climbing up towards her, with a lithe efficiency that widened her smoky grey eyes with admiration and made her heart pump a little faster.

Close to, he was even more knee-tremblingly sensational than her first assessment had led her to believe. And as that first assessment had given him top marks plus in the eye candy category, all Bonnie could do was stare while her entire body went into melting jelly mode.

His face was as stunning as the rest of him. No pretty-boy good-looks these. Hard lines and an angular bone structure carried the stamp of the alpha adult male. Tough, darkly shadowed jawline, and silky black hair, eyes as dark as jet.

Her own eyes fell in a trembling heartbeat to a wide mouth that was a shattering mixture of the sensual and the ruthless.

Wordlessly, he was returning the shockingly intimate intentness of her visual assessment and Bonnie dropped her eyes, her face flaming as something like an electric charge skittered through her.

His bare feet were planted firmly apart on the rock as he finally spoke, his deep, only faintly accented voice sending ripples down her spine. ‘You are hurt. Will you trust me to get you down from this place?’

Pulling herself together, Bonnie found her voice. ‘Of course. Thank you. I’d be grateful.’ She attempted a smile. It wobbled. What was wrong with her? She had both her feet firmly on the ground—metaphorically, if not physically at this precise moment—and she wasn’t the air-headed type to go to pieces just because she’d happened across the most lip-smackingly gorgeous man to inhabit the planet.

She was a practical, down-to-earth qualified remedial nurse and—

Every last sensible thought was swept out of her head as the gorgeous stranger hoisted her, without apparent effort, into a fireman’s lift and carried her down the steep rocks with the surefootedness of a mountain goat.

Carefully depositing her on the soft white sand, he hunkered down in front of her, long, deft fingers gently exploring her injured foot.

His touch was magic. A lock of soft black hair fell forwards over his tanned forehead. She wanted to run her fingers through it.

Stupid woman!

She was shivering all over.

Merely the entirely natural after-effects of her hairy passage down from the cliffs!

Only she hadn’t felt scared. She’d felt safe—gloriously safe.

‘Just a slight sprain and a tiny cut,’ he pronounced, a smile playing at the corners of that devastating mouth. ‘I’ll take you to the house and clean the cut.’

Forcing herself out of the entirely unwelcome ditzy-schoolgirl-meets-pop-star mode, Bonnie located her best no-nonsense voice and used it. ‘You’ve been very kind already, but—Stavros, is it?—I don’t want to put you to any more trouble on my account. I’m sure that if I just rest a while I’ll be fine to go on.’

Dimitri Kyriakis didn’t correct her.

She must have heard him calling to his manservant/minder, to remind him to drive down to the port to collect the incoming mail that had been waiting for two days since the weekly ferry had docked.

The longer his father’s blonde, gold-digging bimbo remained in ignorance of his true identity the better.

His father had taste, though, he conceded grimly. The bimbo was even more enticingly sexy in the flesh than she’d appeared in the photograph. All that long, silky pale blonde hair, falling in a tousled touchable mass to well below her shoulders.

Pretty shoulders, sleek of skin, warm with tan, partially concealed by the turquoise-blue halter top that lovingly cradled truly superb full and shapely breasts. Her cropped top left her tanned midriff naked and tempting above a pair of skimpy shorts. And those legs—

‘It will be no trouble,’ Dimitri contradicted her truthfully. ‘It would be my pleasure to help you.’

Help you to unburden yourself, to tell me exactly what a woman with her eyes on the opportunity to marry an old man for his money is doing scrambling around on an island hardly anyone has heard about, out of her preferred milieu of fancy restaurants, swish hotels and designer boutiques.

Unless, of course, the old man was with her. It seemed unlikely. And did she know that Andreas Papadiamantis was facing a vastly reduced financial status? He guessed not.

She would run like a rabbit if he told her. There was only one reason a beautiful young woman would shack up with an old man, he decided, with the cynicism born of long experience of the female sex. Inform her of the non-existence of the bottomless pit of money and she’d take to her toes.

Yet there was a more entertaining way of depriving his enemy of his bed companion, he thought, staring into a pair of beguiling smoke-grey eyes.

He had never had any trouble in attracting the female sex. Quite the opposite. But he never knew whether his personality was the attraction or his massive wealth.

The latter, he suspected.

It cut both ways. On the few occasions when he’d taken a mistress, he had made it plain that he didn’t do long-term.

So what was new? Earlier he’d played with the idea of settling down, creating a family. Seeing the photograph of this blonde had had the idea taking a nosedive. Meeting the blonde in the flesh had killed it stone-dead. For a while. The fates had delivered another chance to take his revenge for what his father had done all those long years ago right into his lap.

Never one to lose an opportunity, Dimitri swept the delectable gift from the fates up into his arms. His smile as she wound her arms around his neck with a gaspy little sigh was grim. And satisfied.

He had her!

CHAPTER THREE

DIMITRI deposited her on a padded cane chair in the shadiest part of the vine-covered, granite-paved terrace. His heavy-lidded, lash-veiled eyes moved with lazy assessment over her body, taking in the tempting swell of her full breasts, tiny waist and voluptuous hips, resting finally on her wide, generous mouth.

Mistress material.

Quite definitely.

Yet as far as he knew—and he had tracked his enemy through the years with the dedication of a jungle cat stalking its prey—his father didn’t take high-maintenance mistresses. He’d come to know how the older man’s mind worked.

Too great an expenditure of time, effort and money was involved in establishing a mistress.

He would regard it as an unnecessary indulgence.

A wife was different. A wife could be safely ignored, treated as part of the furniture until he had need of her. His extra-marital adventures were furtive backstairs episodes, if his poor mother’s sorry experience was anything to go by.

This bimbo would be angling for a wedding ring. She was no wide-eyed innocent to be dazzled simply by the attentions of her lord and master—not the way she looked, she wasn’t!

Aware that he could be in danger of making assumptions, he mentally ran over the known facts. His father had been off the radar for several months, holed up in his luxurious villa. With this blonde?

Judging by that photograph, she had already got herself firmly embedded in his father’s villa, up close and personal, and an announcement in the press that Andreas Papadiamantis was to take wife number three would appear in the very near future. It was practically a certainty.

How his enemy would be congratulating himself that he had got such a luscious creature to warm his old bones and his bed, whenever he chose to avail himself of such comforts.

Unless he, Dimitri Kyriakis, stopped it.

And that could be fun, as well as turning the screw a little tighter.

Bonnie squirmed against the cushions. She could feel a blush spreading all over her. The way this Stavros guy was looking at her was seriously unsettling.

Everywhere his hot gaze wandered it felt as if he was actually touching her. Her heartbeat quickened and fire licked her skin, a languorous warmth spreading through her, hot and heady, making her breasts feel swollen and heavy, their tips standing to attention within the confines of her halter top. This rivetingly sexy guy could so easily make her forget she was a sensible adult woman, with her head firmly screwed on.

Once bitten twice shy, she reminded herself staunchly.

Though being nibbled by those strong white teeth would be no hardship at all!

Struggling to find something mundane to say, to break the spiralling sexual tension, Bonnie expelled a gusty sigh of relief when he came to her aid.

‘I’ll make that ankle more comfortable. Wait here.’ He disappeared through open, immense sliding glass doors into what she guessed to be his boss’s luxury home.

Stavros’s temporary absence gave Bonnie a much needed breathing space, and the opportunity to don her sensible hat again. So, OK, he was the most charismatic, sexy guy she’d ever come across. But better than that he was probably local, working for one of the island’s wealthy incomers. The chances were he would be able to tell her where to find the elusive Dimitri Kyriakis.

True, according to Andreas, his estranged son only used his island villa occasionally. But on the upside, in a small place like this everyone knew everyone else. It was a close-knit community, with the locals making a living as best they could from the sea and the land. The local grapevine would be buzzing with the doings, the to-ing and fro-ings, of the wealthy other half.

So her smile was radiantly expectant when he reappeared, carrying what appeared to be enough medical supplies to stock a medium-sized pharmacy.

‘I think you could help me,’ she opened, as he knelt in front of her and began to clean the cut on her ankle with cotton wool soaked in something really soothing.

Dimitri frowned. That smile of hers would light up a room. But what gave him pause was the complete lack of artifice. In his experience gold-diggers—and that included beautiful young women who would marry an old man for his money—had artifice oozing from every pore. ‘That is what I’m doing,’ he stated, dabbing the cut dry and applying a plaster.

‘No—I mean—yes. What I mean is—’ Bonnie tried quite desperately to ignore the fluttery feeling that had taken over her insides as soon as those long, cool fingers of his had touched her skin. Tried to stop wanting to run her fingers through the thick, silky black hair that fell in such intriguing disarray over his downbent head. She wanted to touch it so much it was almost a physical pain. ‘I mean—well, I’m trying to locate someone.’

‘Yes?’ Dimitri bound her ankle tightly, and deftly secured the bandage with a tiny pin. It seemed as if he was about to discover what his father’s woman was doing on the island. ‘That should support it adequately, though you’ll have to rest it for a couple of days. You were saying?’ he prompted coolly.

Bonnie blinked. Having this hunk kneeling at her feet took her breath away. No man, not even Troy—and she’d been on the brink of marrying him, for goodness’ sake!—had ever had this effect on her.

Wondering where her sensible hat had got to, she pushed on. ‘He’s got a villa somewhere around here. He doesn’t come often, but he’s here now. And, oh—how silly!—you don’t know who I’m talking about! His name’s Dimitri Kyriakis—have you heard of him? Do you know where his place is?’

Dimitri got to his feet, straightening his lean, powerful figure to its full six feet three inches. His narrowed eyes were darkly probing, and the shock of hearing his name on his father’s bimbo’s lips hardened his voice. ‘Why do you want to know?’

Very few people knew of his bolthole. No more than three. All of them were completely trusted, loyal employees who would die rather than disobey his orders. One of them being his manservant Stavros.

So it had to be down to his enemy. Andreas must have had his spies out, tracking him minutely even as he had tracked the older man through the years. It made sense. Dimitri’s brain clicked into overdrive. He didn’t like mysteries, and this one was solved in ten seconds flat.

He could think of at least two reasons why the old man had sent this woman to find him.

To push him over a cliff to get rid of him.

Or, and far more likely, to use every feminine wile and trick in the book to get close to him and learn of his future intentions via pillow talk.

Did the old man think he would be that indiscreet? That much of a sucker?

But it would be interesting to find out how far she was prepared to go…

Bonnie’s heart was busily sinking. For a moment there Stavros had looked really intimidating. And now draining disappointment had taken her over. Was he going to be the same as the other islanders? Button-lipped when it came to giving information about the revered wealthy part-time residents on whom a large part of the island economy depended? It certainly looked like it.

And there was no way she could answer his question. The reason Andreas wanted her to contact Dimitri Kyriakis was between him and his son—private, and not to be given out to the first stranger who asked. She felt utterly hopeless, and, as that was an emotion she had never encountered before, faintly queasy.

Then everything changed.

‘I will make enquiries for you.’

In receipt of the shatteringly charismatic smile that came her way, accompanied by that welcome and unexpected offer of help, Bonnie breathed, ‘Thank you! I’d be so grateful!’ and wondered why she sounded like a giddy schoolgirl instead of the sensible woman she knew herself to be.

Just how grateful? Dimitri wondered, marvelling at the tightening of his groin at the prospect of finding out—an instant physical reaction he hadn’t experienced since he was a teenager.

He leaned forward and took her hands. And as his fingers tightened around hers and he met her huge smoky eyes he knew that finding out would be no problem for either of them.

She oozed warm, womanly willingness from the hazy eyes, the parted pink lips and the hardening swell of her bounteous breasts, confined by the thin top she was wearing. She was hot for him. He would swear to it.

He discreetly screened his dark eyes beneath thickly fringing black lashes. Play it cool—see how far she would go. If she’d taken her orders from his father to seduce him into revealing his future plans, then she would have to work for the privilege of sharing his bed. Providing he could keep his amazingly rampant libido in check, it would amuse him to watch her at work.

And when he submitted, as he knew he eventually would—because why would he deny himself the undoubted pleasure?—she would learn nothing from him, have only failure to report.

He knew himself to be a past master at getting what he wanted with the least effort to himself. ‘Where are you staying?’ he asked.

He was still holding her hands. It felt more than good. He was a total stranger, and she knew nothing about him. But he made her feel safe. Because he’d come to her rescue when she’d been floundering around on those rocks? Had promised to help her locate the whereabouts of Andreas’s son? Or was there more to it than that?

‘By the harbour, with Athena—the widow Stephanides,’ she answered, her voice strangely thick, her mouth trembling just a little as he slid his hands until they rested beneath her elbows.

‘I know her.’ He helped her to stand on her uninjured foot, a supportive arm sliding around her small waist. ‘It is well known that she caters for the occasional backpacker who turns up on the island. But you are no backpacker.’

A thread of humour laced his voice as the pressure of his arm brought her lush body into closer contact with his. With his free hand he brushed the silvery fall of her hair away from her face with gentle fingers. ‘You are on a man-hunt, ne?’

Wild colour flooded Bonnie’s cheeks. Her lips parted but no sound emerged. Put like that, it sounded awful—full of wicked sexual connotations. And she felt wicked, she thought chaotically. Her body was straining against this half-naked man, his bare torso hot and hard against her tingling breasts, his naked thighs tangling with hers.

Colour bloomed even more fiercely. Until he said prosaically, ‘I’ll drive you back.’ And picked her up as if she were a sack of potatoes.

The temptation to kiss her had been almost over-whelming, but Dimitri had never given in to temptation in his life and wasn’t about to start now. He knew how to play the long game.

A hot, dusty track led to a low stone building, formerly a barn, where his vehicles were housed, benefiting for part of the day from the thick shade of the pines.

Stavros had taken the imposing Range Rover, which left the much humbler buggy—more fitting transport for the local odd-job man she obviously took him to be, he decided, hiding a grim smile as he eased her down into the passenger seat.

‘It will not be a comfortable ride,’ Dimitri imparted with a flash of a gleaming white smile, starting the engine with a rattle and roar that reverberated horrendously within the stone barn. The exhaust needed fixing, he noted, accelerating out of the shade and onto the hot track that wound between rounded hillocks festooned with aromatic wild rosemary.

Not for him the landscaped, meticulously tended surrounds of the other villas, further down the coast. Nor the electronically operated ornate cast-iron gates and artificially blue swimming pools, or the small army of servants recruited from amongst the local population to make sure the pampered inhabitants didn’t have to do anything so primitive as lift a finger for themselves.

When he came to the island he left all the trappings of wealth behind. All he asked for was a view of the ocean, fishing from the rocks when he felt like it, the long room with its vaulted ceiling, cool floor tiles, the immense white stone fireplace large enough to take chunky olive branches should the evening demand a fire—and his books, of course. Those he could never find time to read in what he regarded as the other part of his life.

‘Smoother now,’ he announced above the noise of the engine as the track joined the only proper road where it began its descent from the craggy spine of the island to the harbour. ‘But only just, ne?’ He grinned as they hit a pothole of majestic proportions.

Bonnie could only grit her teeth and hang on to the sides of the unsprung seat, reminding herself that jolting along at speed in an open buggy with the wind of their passage tossing her hair into wild knots and hurling insects into her face was better than having to hop or hobble her way back.

When they finally reached the outskirts of the tiny harbour village, her escort had to slow down to avoid crashing into an ancient estate wagon on the steep, narrow street, easing past the taverna where old men sat, apparently just watching the world go by, the single grocery store, and the pastry shop where the most delicious bread Bonnie had ever tasted could be bought. She could say, without fear of her mouth being invaded by flying insects, ‘I can’t thank you enough, Stavros. You’ve been so kind.’ Which was, she thought, exactly the right tone—the tone of a normally ultra-capable woman who found herself temporarily indebted to a total stranger.

Then she remembered that she needed him to keep his promise to make enquiries as to where she could find Andreas’s estranged son, and felt horribly torn between a self-protective desire never to clap eyes on this incredibly sexy man again and a regrettable, fizzing excitement that invaded and intensified every last one of her female hormones at the thought of sharing time with him.

Just as the buggy came to a welcome halt in front of the widow Stephanides’s pink-painted house, she managed, ‘The least I can do is offer you a cold drink before you head back. I’ll have a word with Athena.’