Kitabı oku: «Married For The Greek's Convenience»

CHAPTER ONE

IF XANDER TRAKAS had thought his week couldn’t get any worse, this was the nail in the coffin to finish him off.

His American lawyer, a thorough man if ever there was one, had confirmed that Xander’s marriage to Elizabeth Young was indeed registered with all the relevant jurisdictions and authorities. However, there was no evidence of their annulment.

They were still married.

He grabbed the back of his neck and rubbed it hard, breathing deeply.

The whole Celebrity Spy! scandal was the mess that just kept giving. What had started as a relatively small teaser promising to reveal the ‘juiciest and most scandalous details’ about the world’s most eligible and debauched bachelors had grown into the scandal of the decade. And to think he had dismissed that initial teaser... Yes, he was considered one of the world’s most eligible bachelors, but debauched? He’d heard plenty of lewd stories about his new brothers in arms over the years. Compared to them he was practically a virgin.

Okay, that might be a notion too far, but a few monogamous affairs throughout the years had nothing on the legendary exploits of Dante Mancini, Benjamin Carter or Sheikh Zayn Al-Ghamdi.

The subsequent articles, not just in Celebrity Spy! but in its rival tabloids and websites the world over, had painted a picture of himself he simply did not recognise. Three of his ex-lovers had sold him out, embellishing and sensationalising what, to him, had been perfectly normal healthy affairs. Half a dozen women he struggled to remember even meeting had sold tales of their nights together. It was complete rubbish.

Strangely enough, the only woman from his past he hadn’t worried about selling her soul for a piece of gold was the woman he’d made the mistake of marrying a decade ago.

All it needed was for one tenacious reporter to go digging through the court records and his marriage would be there for the world to see. It wouldn’t take them long to put two and two together and see that while his jilted Greek fiancée had been falling apart at the seams, he’d been romancing and marrying an American beauty, oblivious to the destruction he’d left behind.

He’d never spoken of his marriage to Elizabeth. Not to anyone. Not his parents. Not his friends.

They’d never lived as man and wife. They’d met, married and gone their separate ways in a mad two-week period on the honeymooner’s paradise of St Francis.

But their separate ways did not include the annulment Elizabeth had sworn—with an uncouth curse thrown at him for good measure—she would obtain.

The last time he’d seen her had been in their hotel villa. She’d had tears streaming down her shell-shocked face.

Did she know their annulment had been denied? Did the billionaire matchmaker know she was the legal wife of a billionaire herself? It beggared belief that she didn’t know, but in all their years apart she’d never reached out to him, not once.

And he’d never reached out to her. He’d pushed her face from his mind almost completely.

He would have to tread carefully.

The report he’d had compiled on her had revealed a different woman from the one he’d known then. She was no longer a carefree nineteen-year-old who lived for nothing more than to feel the wind in her hair and the sun on her face. In the decade since they’d gone their separate ways she’d built a new and successful life for herself.

His phone vibrated, breaking through his thoughts. Hoping it would be his lawyer, who he’d ordered to find out exactly why their annulment had failed, he only just stopped himself pressing the accept button in time. The caller was his father, someone he was not in the mood to speak to.

Xander couldn’t face another argument. The daily calls from Greece were becoming increasingly fractious, from both sides. Late last night, his sister-in-law had been admitted into hospital with alcohol poisoning. Liver failure had been diagnosed. Unless Xander’s brother stopped shovelling drugs into his system, his body would be the next to break down.

All of this would have been difficult enough to cope with without having to deal with the major press intrusion the Celebrity Spy! scandal had unleashed.

Tonight he needed to keep himself together and his head straight. He would return home first thing in the morning but for now he had the annual gala for the Hope Foundation, the main charity he supported, to attend. The press would be out in force. All four of the men in the eye of the scandal would be under the same roof for the first time. They all supported this charity, and evidence was growing that it was now suffering because of its association with them.

Although their businesses lay in different fields, they’d been rivals for years. All four of them were strong, ultra-wealthy men with hard noses for business. There had been nothing friendly about their interactions. Tonight, he suspected they would have to find a way to breach their usual silent antagonism.

All four of them were feeling the pressure. They were in the eye of the storm and the sooner they found their way out of it, the better.

Two weeks later

Elizabeth Young stepped into her West Village apartment with a very real sense of relief. After a week away in Rome, she welcomed the return to the space she called home.

She loved her apartment, set in the heart of New York’s oldest district. While it wasn’t the largest piece of real estate around—she earned excellent money but not that excellent—she had never lived with such contentment anywhere else.

For perhaps the dozenth time since she’d landed at JFK, she checked her cell phone, telling herself it was concern for Piper that had her looking and not the looming possibility of her ex-husband getting in touch.

It was hearing Piper vocalise his name that had her so on edge. The beautiful Australian had been openly prying her with questions. Elizabeth didn’t blame her. In Piper’s shoes she would have been curious too. Three of the men implicated in the Celebrity Spy! scandal had called on her services so it was only natural the fourth would require her assistance too.

Dante did say Xander must call you too.

Were those Piper’s words? They had definitely been something along those lines and had forced Elizabeth to confront what she had spent almost a fortnight in denial about.

Benjamin, Zayn and Dante had all said they’d been recommended to her by Xander. He’d passed her details to them.

She had no idea how her ex-husband knew what she did for a living or how he’d got her details. Leviathan Solutions was run in utter secrecy on a strict word-of-mouth basis.

She assured herself that just because he’d recommended her to the other men it didn’t mean he required her services for himself. His situation was different from the others. Timos SE had been solely owned by the Trakas family for generations.

As a company, it owned countless beauty and clothing lines that were sold around the world. Their customer base couldn’t care less about the scandal. They had no shareholders to pacify or stock markets to tumble from. Xander didn’t need to marry to preserve a family image...

In those first few raw days after he’d dumped her, she’d lived in a cold uncomprehending fog. She would wake hoping it had all been a bad dream and stretch her fingers out, hoping to find him there.

On the fourth day she’d checked her cell phone for the hundredth time, praying for word from him. At that exact same moment her mother had walked into her room. Elizabeth had looked from the cell in her hand to the woman who’d raised her, and the rose-coloured glasses she’d worn all her life had slipped off.

Romance and everlasting love were myths. Her parents were prime examples of this truth and she’d been a naïve idiot to think she would be any different.

From that moment her life changed. Everything.

Over the subsequent years she’d refused to think of the man who’d broken her heart. As far as she’d been concerned, he didn’t exist, which worked for three years until she stumbled on a profile article about the newly appointed head of Timos SE, Xander Trakas. Xander had managed the seemingly impossible and broken into the American market.

Reading it, she’d learned exactly how wealthy he and the Trakas family were, and how powerful; on a par with the Onassis family. It was through this article she’d learned about Ana Soukis. His childhood sweetheart. Xander and Ana had been going to marry but Ana had tragically died in a car accident before they could exchange their vows.

Xander had been twenty when Ana died. The same age he’d been when he’d married her, the lying, cheating dirtbag.

Either he’d married Elizabeth when he was engaged to another woman or he’d married her when he should have been grieving the love of his life.

She’d burnt the article and thanked her lucky stars the lying, cheating scumbag had dumped her before it had been too late to get an annulment. She didn’t think she would have been able to handle a divorce.

As much as she’d hated herself for doing it, she’d kept an eye out for his name over the years. Xander had never remarried. And why should he? He had women falling off his arm; even more women than she had thought possible if one believed Celebrity Spy!

Of all the men in the eye of the scandal’s storm, Xander was the least affected. He had no need to find a wife.

She shouldn’t be thinking of him, she told herself crossly, slipping into her bathroom and putting the plug in the tub.

After a fourteen-hour flight she felt grubby and completely out of sorts.

If Piper hadn’t said what she had, Elizabeth wouldn’t even be thinking of him.

Determined to shove him from her mind, she thought of Piper instead and wished with all her heart she could warn her away from Dante. Elizabeth hadn’t matched them together. Their marriage was being born from a one-night stand that had resulted in a pregnancy. Elizabeth’s services had been required only to make the poor woman over and turn her into a shining, sparkly wife who would look good on Dante’s arm.

If she’d been asked to match Dante with anyone, Piper would have been the last woman on the list. She was much too sweet and naïve for the world she was being thrust into.

Just as she, Elizabeth, had once been too sweet and naïve.

She stripped naked and stepped into the steaming, frothy water, then lay back and closed her eyes.

Her cell rang.

Every atom in her body froze. Including her brain.

Then her heart kick-started, hammering against her ribs as if demanding attention.

Breathing deeply and keeping her eyes squeezed shut, Elizabeth did something she had never done before and ignored it.

Eventually it rang off to voicemail.

A short vibration a moment later told her the caller had left a message.

She opened her eyes and gazed up at the white ceiling she had painted herself, and willed her body into calm.

It didn’t have to be him. It could have been anyone. Her clients were the richest of the rich and not used to waiting for anyone. Most had no concept of personal space or personal time, not when it came to anyone but themselves. To them, she was employed to do a job and if they wanted to call her at ten p.m. on a Friday evening then she should damn well be available to take the call.

She would check the message when she got out and call whoever it was back. Her business was her baby and the one thing in her life she was proud of. She’d built it up from scratch and...

The cell rang out again.

This time her heart flew up her throat. She turned her head to stare at it. She’d placed it on the small ledge where she always put it, within arm’s reach. The screen was flashing in time to the ring.

Before she could galvanise herself to do anything, it went through to voicemail again.

Within ten seconds it started ringing again.

A surge of adrenaline propelled her up. She wiped her hand on the towel on the sink then snatched the phone. It wasn’t a number she recognised.

Her heart now gearing itself to fly out of her mouth, she put the cell to her ear.

‘Hello?’ she said tremulously.

‘Elizabeth?’

Hearing Xander’s deep voice in her ear was as shocking as if she’d plunged herself into a bucket of ice. Her body reacted as if she had, the phone slipping from her rigid fingers and landing with a splash in the water between her legs.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, her blood pressure almost back to normal, her body dry and cocooned in a thick towelling robe, Elizabeth unplugged her hairdryer, which she’d blasted at the SIM card she’d yanked out of her sopping phone. Still cursing herself for her stupidity and hoping the damage was minimal, she inserted the SIM card into her old phone, which she’d dug out of a drawer.

It took three nail-biting minutes before she could confirm the switchover had been successful and that all her contacts had been saved. Unfortunately there was no way to track Xander’s number on the old cell, but intuition told her it wouldn’t be long before she heard from him again, and this time she would be prepared.

Her intuition was correct.

Her old cell still had everything set up on it, including emails. A message pinged into her inbox.

Elizabeth, it’s Xander. I assume you’re having issues with your phone. Here’s my number. Call me as soon as possible.

Her first impulse was to burst into tears but, before they could be unleashed, anger so strong it burned flushed through her and dried the unshed tears in an instant.

So he was going to follow in the footsteps of his fellow Casanovas and employ her.

The nerve of him. The crassness. The complete lack of sensitivity.

What did he need a wife for?

As tempting as it was to fire an angry email back and tell him in graphic detail what he could do with his order to call him back as soon as possible, she held herself back.

Xander had left her ten years ago. If she were rude or ignored him it would imply that she was still angry with him, which in turn would imply she had never gotten over him, which in itself was ridiculous. She was simply tired and overwrought after a busy few weeks.

She would prove she didn’t have any residual feelings for him.

She stood in front of her bedroom mirror and counted to thirty, then keyed in the number. It was answered on the first ring.

‘Thanks for calling me back.’

His businesslike tone echoed into her ear.

Keeping her focus on her reflection, Elizabeth fixed a smile to her face so her complete lack of residual feelings for him echoed down the line. ‘No problem. My apologies for earlier. I dropped my cell phone in Rome and it’s been playing up since.’ The lie fell smoothly from her tongue. Her voice sounded as friendly as she wanted it to be.

‘Is it liable to cut out again?’

‘No. I’m back home and have switched to my old one.’

‘Good.’ Without any pause he added, ‘I need to see you.’

‘Okay.’ She dragged the word out to stop herself from screaming at him and then hurtling the cell down the toilet. Still smiling, she said, ‘Do you have a particular date in mind?’ If she could get out of this she would but her company—her very reputation—was built on her personal touch. She brought her own unique take to matchmaking and it was hugely successful. The staff she employed were for technical and clerical support only.

‘I’m flying to your part of the world shortly. Are you available to meet tomorrow?’

Xander lived on a Greek island. Elizabeth made some swift calculations. It had to be almost six a.m. there. What time did the man get up?

Then she remembered the news stories. He probably hadn’t gone to bed yet.

Or was he speaking to her from his bed? Did he have a woman asleep beside him at that very moment?

‘Elizabeth?’

Swallowing back the sick feeling roiling in her stomach, she thought of her upcoming schedule. ‘When you say tomorrow...?’

‘Saturday. I should land around three p.m. Eastern time.’

‘I have a lunch appointment tomorrow.’

‘So you can do the afternoon.’ It was a statement not a question and it set panic clawing through her.

‘I’m free for the whole of Sunday,’ she said, jumping at the chance to delay the meeting, even if only by a day. ‘Do you know where my office is?’

‘We won’t be meeting there. I need you to fly out to meet me.’

Prickles made a slow crawl up her spine but she kept her tone breezy. ‘Meet you where?’

‘St Francis.’

All the air seemed to knock itself out of her lungs and the smile fell from her face.

‘There won’t be time to get my jet to New York to collect you, so I’ll charter one to fly you over when your appointment’s finished,’ he continued. ‘Pack an overnight bag and keep Sunday clear for me.’

She couldn’t speak. Her brain had gone cold, her knees weakening enough that she shuffled back and sank onto the edge of her bed.

‘Is there a problem, Elizabeth?’ There was a hint of challenge in his businesslike tone.

She covered her mouth to hide the sound of herself clearing her throat, then said, ‘There’s no problem at all. I’ll meet wherever it’s most convenient for you.’

‘St Francis is where it’s convenient for me.’

‘Are you aware I require a down payment of a quarter of my fee for overseas trips?’ She strove to keep her voice composed and her breathing even.

‘Message me your banking details and the amount, and I’ll get it paid.’

Before she could think let alone voice any objection, he said, ‘That’s everything settled, then. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

And then the line went dead.

She pulled the phone away from her ear and gazed at it as if it might suddenly bite.

Had that really just happened?

Billionaires throwing their weight around was nothing new. She was used to acting on their whims and fancies, had once conducted an interview with a client in a luxury Saharan Bedouin tent less than twelve hours after his initial call. To reach billionaire status required a ruthlessness mere mortals struggled to achieve. They weren’t all bad people by any means but they were used to getting their own way and working to their own agenda, and she was used to complying with their whims. It was one of the reasons she’d become such a hit in their world.

Her conversation with Xander was a variety of one she’d held dozens of times with other clients. It hadn’t been anything special. They were strangers who happened to have been married once and spent a grand total of fourteen days together. He clearly had no residual feelings for her, just as she had none for him.

It was the destination of St Francis that had thrown her into a funk.

Of all the places in the world, why there? Why?

It couldn’t be coincidence that her ex-husband had chosen the very island where they’d met, married and separated to employ her services in finding him a new wife.

* * *

Xander disconnected the call and sighed heavily. He walked to his window and looked out over the Aegean, where the sun’s first rays bounced on the horizon between the lightening sky and the still dark sea.

That was a call he’d hoped to not have to make. After the furious row with his parents that had gone on into the early hours, he’d come to the conclusion he had no other choice.

For his nephew’s sake he needed a wife and he needed one now. It was sheer chance that he already had one.

All he had to do was convince Elizabeth to go along with it. After the way he’d ended things between them all those years ago, he knew he had a fight on his hands to get it. He could handle it. He was used to battles. Every day of his life was one.

He’d heard her sharp inhalation when he’d mentioned their destination. He’d deliberately kept their conversation short and to the point so she wouldn’t have time to object. He would not give her the time or place to reject his proposal.

Elizabeth wasn’t the girl he’d fallen for all those years ago who wore her heart on her sleeve and her emotions on her face. She’d matured into a discreet, professional woman with a cool analytical head.

She would need that cool head if she were to make the correct decision and agree to be his wife again.