Chosen by the Greek Tycoon: The Antonakos Marriage / At the Greek Tycoon's Bidding / The Greek's Bridal Purchase

And she had no way out.

‘Oh, Dad! Why did you have to be so stupid? How could you have made such a mess of things?’

If only…

But no! Skye caught herself up sharply, giving herself a brusque, reproving shake.

She couldn’t let herself dwell on if only. Couldn’t even let herself dream of if only.

But, oh, if only she had never made that mad, foolish mistake last week. If only she hadn’t given into the crazy, wild impulse to have one last night of freedom while she could.

And if only she had never met the most devastating man called Anton. A man who had taken her to bed for the most amazing, most stunning, most memorable night of passion. The only night of such passion she was ever likely to know. A night of passion she would never forget.

And she could never, ever forget the man who had shared it with her.

But because she would never forget, then the situation in which she now found herself became so very much worse. Appallingly so. Perhaps before last week she might have been able to bear the prospect of the future with some degree of equanimity. Now she had been shown, oh, so briefly, the image of another, very different future, only to have it snatched away from her for ever, and she had no idea at all how she was ever going to cope.

But she had to. Even though she felt that her heart would break just with trying.

‘Come on, Marston!’ she told herself fiercely. ‘Pull yourself together. You’re going to have to make the best of this!’

She could at least keep herself busy. Keep her mind occupied and not let herself brood.

What was it Cyril had said before he left—to go into the village on business?

‘Make yourself at home. The house is yours—anything you want, just ask for it. Use the cinema, or the pool.’

The pool! There was her answer. Some exercise would distract her; it would fill the long, empty afternoon that stretched ahead. And if she was lucky, it would tire her out so that she would finally manage to sleep tonight.

And she needed to sleep, she told herself as she pulled open a drawer, hunting through it for the sleek white costume that Cyril had insisted on buying for her when he had realised that she didn’t have anything to wear to swim in, apart from the regulation navy blue one piece that had seen her through school and was now definitely on its last legs.

She would exercise until she was exhausted and then tonight she might crash out, almost unconscious. With luck she would not have to lie there, in the strange bed, staring at the white-painted ceiling, remembering…

Or would falling asleep be worse? Every night she had slept so badly, locked in feverish dreams of a night in a hotel, a long, sleekly muscled body next to hers, powerful arms holding her, jet-black eyes looking down at her. And every morning she had woken with the bedclothes in a twisted tangle, knotted around her body, evidence of the disturbed night she had passed.

She was shivering with reaction to her memories as she pulled on the white swimsuit, grabbed a towel, and headed for the pool.

Theo’s unpacking only took a very short time. There was little enough to put away in the cupboards of the pool house where his father had left instructions he was to stay, his old room apparently being occupied by The Fiancée, and now he was at a loss. The afternoon was warm and the thought of the cool, clear water of the pool was appealing. It was the work of seconds to change into black swimming shorts and head outside, padding silently in bare feet over the white-tiled surround.

What he didn’t expect was to see someone already in the water. Shock brought him to a halt, eyes narrowing against the glint of the sun on the water as he studied the scene before him.

A sleek form sped through the water, powering from one end of the pool to another. A sleek female form in a clinging white costume. The Fiancée, if he wasn’t very much mistaken. He couldn’t see much of her from here, she was swimming away from him and the water hid most of her body. He had a brief, blurred impression of dark hair, long, slender arms slicing through the water, slim, toned legs kicking out behind the shapely body, high, tight buttocks…

What the hell was he doing? He couldn’t have thoughts like that about his father’s fiancée—the woman who was going to be his stepmother by the end of the month.

Or was this in fact the brand-new fiancée? Because she was much younger than he had ever anticipated…

Perhaps The Fiancée had been married before and this girl was a daughter? Whoever she was, she made him think disturbingly of the mysterious Skye.

He’d better make himself known to her. He didn’t want to give the impression of behaving like a peeping Tom, standing here staring at her.

‘Kalimera.’

She hadn’t heard him—the water must still be in her ears. Or perhaps she didn’t even understand Greek. A cynical smile twisted his mouth. It was an indication of just how bad things had become between him and his father that he had no idea whether the new woman in Cyril’s life was Greek or some other nationality entirely. The last time he had known anything about any of Cyril’s mistresses, his father had been deeply involved with a woman from the village.

‘Good afternoon.’ He spoke again, more firmly and clearly this time, just as she reached the far end of the pool and held onto the side, wiping the water from her face. ‘I think I ought to introduce myself to you, Stepmama.’

It was her stillness that told him something was wrong. The sudden total freezing into immobility that caught on a raw edge in his mind and made him frown, studying her more closely.

Just what had he said that had startled her so much?

Even from this distance he could see the way that she clutched at the side of the pool, the pressure that turned the knuckles white on each delicate hand.

That hand…

Suddenly, shockingly, it was as if he had been kicked in the stomach hard.

A cold, damp night in London. A smoky bar. The laughter of two men.

A hand held prisoner on the table top.

‘Theos, no!’

He had to be imagining things. Fooling himself.

But in the warmth of the Greek sun the hair that tumbled down her back—the hair that he had thought was dark, but now he could see was only soaked with water from the pool—was already starting to dry. And as it dried its colour changed, lightening…revealing a red-gold tint.

‘Ochi…’

Feeling as if he had been slapped on the side of the head, Theo reverted to his native Greek, shaking his head in denial of what he was seeing, what he suspected.

‘No!’

It couldn’t be true.

But if it wasn’t, then why was she still standing as if frozen, with her head turned away from him—that long, straight back held tight with tension, the delicate hands clenched over the edge of the pool?

Why didn’t she turn and face him—revealing the features of a total stranger, shattering the foolish, damn stupid, appalling delusion that had taken a grip on his mind and wouldn’t let go?

She wasn’t…she couldn’t be…

‘Skye?’

From the moment that she had first heard that voice, Skye had been fixed to the spot, unable to move, unable to think, unable to breathe.

‘Good afternoon,’ he had said, and it was as if a cruel hand had reached out through time and yanked her backwards, dragging her away from the present, and back into the past, into a whirlwind of memories that paralysed her mind, slashed at her soul.

‘Good afternoon.’

Those were the words she had heard in the clear light of today. But in her mind what she had heard was: Oh, but he does.

The first words that Anton had spoken on the night in London. The night that ever since had simply become that night in her thoughts, with no further title needed.

That night.

That was when she had first heard that rich, slightly husky voice with the touch of the beautiful accent that made her toes curl in response.

But how could she have heard it here and now?

She had to be imagining things! She couldn’t have heard it. He couldn’t be here. Fate couldn’t be so cruel.

But then he had said, ‘I think I ought to introduce myself to you,’ and the world had tilted violently, swinging right off balance, making her head spin crazily.

Her vision had blurred, her stomach had clenched tight in panic. She couldn’t see, couldn’t think. She had to know—and yet she didn’t dare to look round, terrified in case she was right. In case it was him.

And then the worst horror of all.

‘Skye?’

He used her name. In the voice that she had heard him use dozens of times—a hundred times—on that night. She had heard it said calmly, heard it said softly, heard it said huskily, seductively, passionately, demandingly. And finally, she had heard her own name used as a cry of fulfilment, as he had lost himself in her. But always, always, in that voice.

Anton?

She didn’t dare to speak his name aloud, fearing that she might be tempting fate by doing so. That she might turn into reality what she still fervently hoped was just a delusion, a trick of sound combining with her overactive imagination.

‘What the hell?’

The harsh, angry question brought her swinging round, unable to bear the suspense any longer. She had to know.

He was standing on the edge of the pool, hands on hips. The sun was behind him so that she had to squint against it to see his face. But she already knew, and her heart was racing so fast that she was sure it would escape the confines of her chest. Already she couldn’t breathe and her mind was frozen in stunned horror.

Perhaps it was because of that, or perhaps it was the sun dazzling her eyes, but something made her lose her grip, slip and fall. She reached for the rim of the pool, missed, and went under, still gasping for breath.

Water in her ears and eyes, she didn’t hear anything, couldn’t see anything. She went down…down…

There was a flurry nearby. A long body slashed into the water at her side. Strong hands seized her; powerful arms hauled her up to the surface. Before she had time to think, she was dragged to the shallow end of the pool, and supported gently as she gasped and wheezed, struggling to get her breath back.

‘Steady,’ that voice advised her. ‘Breathe deeply.’

She would if she could, Skye told herself, but if anything was guaranteed not to calm her down, it was this.

Now she didn’t have to look into his face to know he was Anton. Even after only one night—that night—she knew this male body so intimately that she could never mistake it. There were the hard, strong bones of the ribcage, the black curling hair that marked a path down the centre of his chest, disappearing under the waistband of the swimming trunks. There was the tiny, crescent shaped scar high up on his collar-bone, almost at the base of his throat. And if there had been any room for doubt, then her nostrils were filled with the scent of his body, musky, intensely male, warmed by the sun and blending with the ozone tang of the pool water.

She didn’t know if it was her intense physical reaction to him or simply the shock of his sudden appearance that made her tremble all over, her legs feeling too weak to support her.

‘Thank you,’ she managed, her voice sounding as if she had been running a marathon.

‘No problem,’ he returned smoothly, though there was a dark thread to his voice that brought her head up sharply, frowning grey eyes meeting the fixed black gaze of his.

He didn’t enlighten her further, but instead half dragged, half carried her to the low stone steps into the pool, swinging her up into his arms and carrying her out onto the tiled edge where he set her down again beside a wooden lounger.

Skye had to bite down hard on her lower lip to keep her mouth closed against the cry of protest as he let her go. In his arms, she had been struggling with a terrible longing, with a weak, dangerous impulse to turn her head into his chest and let it rest there. The need to nestle close into his arms, to put her own hands up around his neck and cling on tight, had almost overwhelmed her. But she had known that such a response was forbidden her. She had forfeited the right to it in the moment that she had closed the door on that hotel room and walked away.

He would never know just how hard she had found it to do that. How much she had longed to stay, but known that it was impossible. She had left a piece of her heart with him, though he would never know it. And as soon as he worked out just why she was here then he wouldn’t even want her near him, let alone keep her in his arms where she longed to be.

Still supporting her with one hand, he snatched up a towel with the other and began to rub her dry. His movements were brisk and impersonal and the one, nervous look she shot at his face made her stomach tie itself into tight, painful knots of apprehension.

The stunning face was tight with control, skin drawn so taut over the forceful bone structure that it was actually white at the corners of his mouth with the effort of not speaking. He was only keeping quiet until she had recovered.

And then?

Just the thought made her shiver again, more violently this time, yelping in discomfort as he increased the pressure of the towel on her sensitised skin.

‘Sighnomi…’

The apology was abstracted and he tossed the towel away, coal-black eyes raking over her from the top of her head, where her wet hair hung in tangled rats’ tails around her face, to the bare pink toes on the white-tiled surface.

But it was when they swung back up to her face that her courage almost failed her completely.

Now it was going to begin, she told herself, swallowing hard.

He’d waited long enough, that cold, set expression said. Now he wanted explanations.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘WE HAVE some talking to do.’

Theo had no idea how he kept control over his voice. The coldly burning rage inside him would keep fighting to get away from his determination to rein it in, and the resulting conflict made his tone brutal and cold as a sword of ice.

He wanted to know just what the hell was going on. How the woman he had last seen in a London hotel room—the woman who had wanted only a one-night stand, no names, no information—had turned up on Helikos, at his father’s house, in his father’s pool.

Though he would be able to think much more clearly if she would just cover up.

‘Don’t you have a wrap or something? Something to put on.’

‘I—I’m not cold.’

‘It’s not your temperature I was thinking of!’

He knew he was glaring ferociously. The look in her eyes and the way that she took an instinctive step backwards, away from him, told him that. But he had been knocked off balance by the discovery of her in the pool and being close to her, like this, only made matters so much worse.

He had thought that his memories of her soft-skinned, naked body were arousing enough—in fact, he had tried to convince himself that he had exaggerated her appeal. No woman, no real, living, breathing woman, could have been as physically appealing as his recollections told him she had been. But those recollections had been nothing but the truth.

Less than the truth, in fact. Because the memories had none of the warm, physical presence of this woman. And though the white swimming costume might be modest when compared with the skimpy bikinis worn by so many on the Greek beaches, its subtle sexuality was doing devastating things to his heart rate and his ability to think. The stretchy material clung to the swell of her breasts and hips, the thin straps revealing the peachy skin and soft curves of her shoulders, while the cutaway shape made her legs seem endlessly elegant. Just to think of those long legs curled around his waist, squeezing tight as she gave herself up to the throes of her orgasm, threatened to blow his mind into tiny, spinning splinters that were impossible to form into any coherent thoughts.

‘We might both be able to talk more rationally if you were more—respectably dressed.’

That softly curved mouth took on a mutinous set that wasn’t quite matched by the fiare of something in her eyes. Not anger, but something wild and defiant, clashing with his dark glare until he almost felt he could see sparks in the air between them.

‘And you think that your clothing is so much more decorous?’ she flashed back, lacing the words with an unexpected sting.

‘Is that a way of saying that you don’t trust yourself to keep your hands off me?’ Theo said scornfully. ‘Because you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t believe you. You had no trouble tearing yourself away from my bed that night…’

‘That night was a mistake and one I’ve regretted ever since.’

‘Not as much as I have, lady. I don’t happen to go in for one-night stands and if I’d known you were going to disappear like that, I’d have had more than second thoughts about the whole situation. And then when I find you swimming in my father’s pool—’

‘I never tried to deceive you in any way. I told you exactly what…’

Her voice died abruptly as she realised just what he had said. All colour fied from her cheeks, leaving her looking white as a ghost.

‘Your father’s—!’

She actually glanced back at the pool and then back to his face, her grey eyes wide with shock and disbelief.

‘Did you say…?’

This couldn’t be real! It couldn’t be happening, Skye thought in desperation. Please let it not be happening. Please let it be a dream—a nightmare from which she could wake.

He couldn’t have said my father’s pool. Because that would make him Cyril’s son. The son of the man she had to marry. The son of the man who held the fate of her whole family in his hands and who could destroy their hope of a future if he chose.

She actually caught a tiny part of her arm in her fingers and pinched hard, praying it might bring her out of the horror. But, of course, nothing happened. She was still standing there, bathed in the Greek sunlight, with the only sound that of a faint ripple of the water in the pool where a breeze hit it.

And Anton was standing beside her, big and dark and dangerous-looking.

‘But you said your name was Anton.’

She flung the accusation into his cold, set face, but his expression didn’t change and he continued to regard her with a stony lack of expression.

Anton…Antonakos. Suddenly the truth fell into place with a shock that made her head spin.

‘You lied to me!’

His shrug was a swift, careless dismissal of the charge.

‘I was economical with the truth. I find it’s often the best policy until I get to know someone’s real motives.’

The cold, slashing look he flung at her left her in no doubt that she had been included in the group of people whose motives he considered suspect. The ice in it seemed to take away all the heat of the sun so that her skin crawled with goose-bumps and it was all she could do to suppress an instinctive shiver. Reaching for the towel she had left on the wooden lounger earlier, she pulled it round her, knotting it securely over her breasts, under her armpits.

Covered, she felt a little more confident until he spoke again.

‘And, as I recall, you were the one who insisted we kept to one name only.’

He was right, of course, and the knowledge of it didn’t make her feel any better. Dear God, what sort of malign fate had brought her together with this man on that night? How had she had the appalling bad luck to walk into the one bar where Cyril’s son had been sitting on his own?

And what had he been doing in London? All she knew about Cyril and his son was that they had not been on the best of terms for some time. So did this man know…?

The terrible reality of the whole truth she had been keeping from him made her stomach heave nauseously.

‘Mine was at least my real one,’ she said, taking the risk of stepping a little further into the danger zone. ‘I’m Skye Marston.’

There was no flicker of anything in the opaque-eyed stare that he turned on her. So was it possible that his father hadn’t told him?

‘Theodore Antonakos,’ he returned, totally deadpan. ‘Usually known as Theo.’

The look that scoured over her made her feel as if it had scraped away a much-needed layer of skin, so that in spite of the bulky protection of the towel wrapped around her she felt exposed and naked to his cold scrutiny.

‘So now what?’ the man she now had to call Theo drawled with lazy mockery. ‘Do we shake hands formally and really do everything totally back to front?’

‘I think we’ll take the handshake as read,’ Skye returned stiffly. The idea of even touching him frankly terrified her. She just could not forget the burn of his skin on hers, the caressing touch of those long, powerful hands that could turn as gentle as the patting paws of a kitten when he chose or be as demanding as blazing fire. ‘We’ve already done that bit.’

‘And more,’ he returned dryly, and the wicked gleam deep in those brilliant black eyes told her that he remembered every moment of it.

As did she.

That night was etched onto her brain in images of fire. It had been bad enough when it was just a memory. But now, with the man himself an actual physical force before her, not just an image in her mind, she felt as if her thoughts might go up in flames as a result.

‘I’d rather forget about that.’

The tension in every inch of her body had affected her mouth too, and the words came out so tight and clipped they could hardly have been more stilted. Her voice sounded like some second-rate actress trying to speak like an upper-class Englishwoman, and strangling the sounds as she did so.

Evidently Theo thought so too, as his wide, mobile mouth twitched uncontrollably at her words. But every last trace of humour was erased from it when he spoke, and his eyes had turned to black ice under heavy, hooded lids.

‘I’m sure you would, but I have to tell you that I don’t feel the same.’

Provocatively he reached out a lazy hand and trailed his fingers along her throat and across the top of the white towel, coming to a deliberate halt by the knot that held it closed.

‘The truth is that the experience is one I would very much like to repeat.’

The bronzed fingertips moved to the edge of her shoulder, then back again, and it was all Skye could do to control the instinctive squirm of response that would have betrayed her feelings.

The instant peaking and hardening of her breasts was something she could do nothing about. A heat that had nothing to do with the sun, licked along her veins, making the towel seem too heavy, the clinging white swimming costume too restricting to wear underneath it. But she could only be thankful that the thick padding hid her intimate reaction from those probing black eyes.

‘Then I’m afraid you’ll have a long wait. I told you it was a one-night thing only.’

‘You also told me that we would never know each other’s names. Never meet again.’

He paused just long enough for the shocking impact of those words to hit home hard with the realisation that both of them had now been disproved.

‘And I told you that I never do one-night stands. It’s a personal rule I have.’

‘Well, then, it’s a rule that you’re just going to have to break this time. Because I have no intention of renewing our—acquaintance in any way. One night was more than enough for me and that’s the way I want things to stay.’

‘Is that so?’

His arms folded across his chest, Theo looked her up and down with coldly contemptuous black eyes.

‘Well, let’s see.’

Before Skye had a moment to realise just what was in his thoughts, he had moved forward, taking her chin in one powerful hand and wrenching her face up towards his. She had just one split second in which to recognise the ruthless intent in his eyes, but not long enough to voice the protest that formed in her mind.