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

He had met her precisely twice—for less than a day at a time—and on those occasions she had been perhaps half a dozen different women, changing her personality and her behaviour as quickly and easily as he changed his clothes.

Looking at her now, no one would ever guess that she had been that nervous, distressed creature in the London bar, let alone the wild, passionate woman who had been in his bed that night.

Now here she was the picture of cool elegance in that sleek turquoise silk dress, sleeveless and with a deep vee neckline. Silver glittered at her ears and around the long graceful neck, exposed by the way she had piled that glorious rich coloured hair up at the back of her neck, and she looked calm, relaxed and totally in control.

But she couldn’t really be in control, any more than he could. She had to know that their shared secret was there, between them, like a dark shadow.

He lifted his glass again to drink, then reconsidered and only pretended to sip from it. His head was clouded enough. His thoughts had been reeling since the instant in which his father’s announcement had hit him like a punch to his jaw, and he still hadn’t decided what to do about it.

‘You don’t want to go out—to clubs—or bars?’

He wasn’t quite sure who was watching whom—only that it seemed to him as if there were no one in the room but the two of them. His father might have disappeared completely, and the quiet, decorous presence of a couple of maids barely impinged on his consciousness.

‘Skye doesn’t frequent clubs and such.’

It was Cyril who answered, reminding Theo sharply of the fact that he was there, at the head of the table. That this was his house—his father’s home—and the woman opposite was his father’s future bride.

‘That’s one of the things that attracted me to her. Her innocence. She’s not like so many modern young women.’

This time Theo really did have to gulp down a large mouthful of his wine, if only to stop himself from laughing out loud, or making some cynical comment, revealing just precisely how he felt about that statement.

So she had his father totally conned. The old man had no idea at all what she was really like.

So why didn’t he just tell him? Why didn’t he just open his mouth and say the words?

Your fiancée is not at all the woman you think she is.

The words sounded so clearly inside his head that for one heart-stopping moment he almost thought he’d said them aloud and froze, waiting for the explosion that would follow.

But nothing happened. The declaration had just been in his imagination and the conversation continued just as be-fore—his father blithely ignorant of the emotional grenade that had almost exploded right in his face.

Because that was the effect it would have had. In one split second, Cyril Antonakos would have gone from being the proudly possessive fiancé of a beautiful, stylish, sexy…

Oh, Theos, so devastatingly sexy…

A gorgeous, glamorous, much younger woman.

One moment, Cyril would have been the envy of all men with such a woman on his arm—the next he would have known the sordid truth.

‘Her mother has been unwell. So Skye spends most of her time at home, caring for her.’

Except when she’s out trawling bars, picking up strange men…

Once more Theo had to bite down hard on his lower lip to stop the words from escaping.

Skye’s stunning eyes had dropped, staring down at her hands on the table, and it was all he could do not to laugh out loud in cynical admiration. As a pose of innocent modesty, it was damn near perfect—except that he knew it was a lie and so did she.

So why didn’t he just admit it? Why didn’t he announce to his father that the woman Cyril thought was a sweet, unworldly, family type wasn’t anything of the sort?

Because if he did then, as well as damning her, he would destroy himself in his father’s eyes. In fact, he would probably end up painted as the villain of the piece and Cyril would turn his back on him once and for all—for good this time. His father would cut him out of his life without a second thought.

And he had vowed that if his father ever held out an olive branch of peace he would grab it with both hands. That he would do everything in his power to repair the breach that had come between them; end the estrangement if he possibly could.

That was why he was here now. Why he had come to be the best man at the wedding—unaware of just who the bride his father had chosen was. He knew what interpretation his father would probably put on it. That he had come crawling back because he thought that doing so would change Cyril’s mind about cutting him out of his will.

Well, if that was the case, then he would take a great delight in letting the old man know that he had no need at all of anyone else’s money. He had more than enough of his own.

But this island was a very different matter. Helikos had come to Cyril through his first wife—Theo’s mother. It had been in her family for centuries. Calista Antonakos had been buried here, as had both her father and mother before her. It was Theo’s rightful inheritance, and one he would fight for with the last strength in his body. He certainly didn’t intend to lose it because of some little gold-digger who had caught his father’s attention. This year’s wife who, if she followed the example of every other Kyria Antonakos, would be here and gone again in the space of a couple of years.

‘That is unusual,’ he managed, knowing from the tiny flicker of a glance in his direction that Skye was unable to control that the acid tone of the words hadn’t been lost on her. ‘I have to admit that in anyone else I might find it hard to accept about any modern young woman. But, having met your lovely fiancée, I can believe anything of her. Why, when I first encountered her this afternoon, she was embarrassed at being caught in just her swimming costume—in spite of the fact that it was a far more modest design than so many I have seen.’

She was listening hard again. All her attention was focused on his face, and the way those slender, elegant hands were nervously folding her napkin over and over on itself betrayed the inner tension that she had managed to smooth from her expression. She was not at all sure just in what direction he was going to take this and that thought gave him an intense, dark satisfaction.

He waited a nicely calculated moment before continuing with deliberate casualness.

‘In fact, there was one woman I met last weekend…She was exactly Skye’s age—and build—but the skirt she wore was barely there. She was probably showing far more flesh than you were this afternoon, Stepmama.’

Oh, she didn’t like that! She had definitely winced at that ‘Stepmama’, flinching back in her chair at his tone.

‘So it was hardly surprising that she got herself into trouble with some roughs in a bar—’

But Skye had clearly had enough. Dropping the napkin down on the table, she suddenly met his mocking gaze head on, a new flame of bravado in her soft grey eyes.

‘That’s precisely why I never go into bars or clubs if I can help it!’ she declared defiantly. ‘You can never tell what sort of thug you might meet there.’

Thug! It was meant to sting and it did.

Whatever else he had been that night, thug didn’t describe it. He had treated her as well as she had any right to expect, when she had come on to him as she had. But of course she would want to make out that she had been the innocent in all this, to win the sympathy vote, just in case Cyril ever found out the truth.

A black tide of rage swamped his mind, drowning all rational thought, and his hand clenched so tightly on the stem of the wineglass that he was within an inch of snapping it sharply in two.

He couldn’t stand to be in the room with the lying, conniving little bitch any longer. He had to get out of here or explode. And if he did lose his temper, then he would take Skye Marston and her calculated play-acting with him. He would tell the truth about their meeting—give his father every single gory detail, and then walk out while the shock waves were reverberating round the house.

But those shock waves would damage his world too. They would take the fragile peace he had made with his father and shatter it irrevocably into tiny, irreparable pieces. If he took Skye Marston down, then she would take his last chance of inheriting Helikos with her. And he wasn’t prepared to let that go.

Not for a cheap little tramp who was clearly well practised in lying through her teeth.

‘Well, you don’t need to worry about getting rid of me,’ he said, tossing down his own napkin and getting to his feet. He directed what he hoped was obviously a fake smile of understanding, his gaze going to where his father’s hand still rested on her arm.

‘I can see that you two would obviously like to be alone—and I’d hate to intrude. Besides, I’m expecting a call from a young lady.’

It was only his secretary with news of a contract he was working on, but hell would freeze over before he would admit to that.

‘So I’ll say goodnight, Father—Stepmama. And I’ll see you in the morning.’

He was proud of the way that he managed to stroll from the room. Pleased with the fact that he didn’t pause or look back, or even show that he gave a damn about what he was leaving behind him. He knew he appeared relaxed, casual and totally at ease.

The truth couldn’t be more different.

Because, no matter how much he might tell himself that he had kept quiet only because of Helikos, he knew that the real truth was much more complicated than that. Ever since that night they had spent together in London he hadn’t been able to get the searingly erotic images of Skye Marston out of his thoughts—and he still couldn’t. Just sitting opposite her had set off a string of heated images that circled over and over in his thoughts until he felt he would go mad.

He didn’t want to think of them—didn’t want to think of her.

But the truth was that he could think of nothing else.

CHAPTER SEVEN

HE MIGHT as well face facts; he was never going to sleep.

Theo finally admitted to himself that he had no chance at all of drifting into the welcome unconsciousness of slumber, no matter how hard he tried.

He had been tossing and turning in his bed for an hour or more now, and even working on the intensely boring business documents he had tried to use to numb his mind into sleeping had not had the desired effect. He was as wide awake as he had been when he’d left the dining table—wider, in fact, as his struggle not to think of Skye Marston had left him feeling more and more restless with each second that passed.

Eventually he gave up completely, tossed the file down onto the floor, flung himself out of bed and dragged on the pair of swimming shorts that he had discarded earlier.

He had wanted to swim earlier and had been frustrated. Finding Skye in the pool had driven every other thought from his head.

But now he felt so restless and edgy, with a tension building up inside him like the growing oppression before a storm. He had to act or explode. He had to do something! And exercise was the sanest, the safest thing he could think of.

Swimming in the still of the night, with only the moon for light, was a calming, relaxing experience. There was no one around, only the sound of an owl hooting once or twice to disturb the silence. Theo swam the length of the pool over and over and over again, backwards and forwards. Long, powerful strokes swept through the water, his muscular legs kicked again and again, until at last he felt a degree of peace descend on him.

Slowly, he began to tire, but still he pushed himself harder and further until his muscles ached and his breathing had a raw edge to it.

‘Enough,’ he muttered at one last turn. ‘Enough.’

Now, at last, he felt he might sleep.

If he could just keep Skye Marston from his mind then he might actually get some rest. It was after one in the morning, time to go to bed.

The single-storeyed pool house was in darkness. Only a small lamp by the door glowed to break up the pitch-black that came from being so far out in the country without a single street lamp for miles. But Theo knew his way around from growing up here as a boy. Shaking the water drops from his soaked hair, he padded into the hall, confident and sure on bare feet. Pausing only to snatch up a towel from a hook in the shower room, he made his way to the kitchen, rubbing himself dry as he went.

The light switch was to his left. Not even needing to look, he reached out a hand and clicked it on.

And froze in shock at the sight of the silent female figure sitting at the kitchen table, her face pale, her back stiffly upright, and her hands folded on the surface in front of her.

She was dressed in just a simple white tee shirt and jeans, her feet bare. The long red hair was loose and fell unstyled over her shoulders and down her back; there was no trace of make-up at all that he could see on her pale, soft face, and she looked stunning.

So stunning that he cursed the kick his heart gave just at the sight of her. The next moment he instinctively moved the towel he was holding so that it fell down in front of him, hiding the instant hardness that strained against the front of his shorts. How could he still respond to just the sight of this woman like this when he now knew just what she was?

An hour’s swim in the cool water of the swimming pool and he still felt like this! Hot and hungry in the space of a heartbeat. He was frankly surprised that the remains of the water on his body weren’t evaporating from the heat of his skin in a cloud of steam. What he needed was to go and plunge back into the water.

That or a very long, very cold shower.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Waiting for you,’ Skye said quietly. ‘We have to talk.’

‘No, we don’t. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want and I don’t want to talk to you.’

Skye drew in a deep breath and carefully tried to adjust her thoughts, find the new approach that would fit better with this obviously truculent mood he was in.

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Maybe you do—though I don’t see why. Seems to me you made your decision about things a week ago when you decided to use me for a one-night stand and then disappear out of my life—back to my father’s bed.’

‘Oh, no!’

That brought her head up sharply. She couldn’t have him believing that! The situation was bad enough as it was, but she couldn’t let him continue to think that way.

‘I never—I mean—we never…We don’t share a bed, your father and I. And we’ve never…’

Her voice trailed off as Theo slashed a hand through the air in a brutal silencing gesture.

‘Enough!’ he declared harshly. ‘Way too much information. Though at least I’m spared the worry that my papa might start banging on the door, demanding to be let in, having woken in the middle of the night and found that his fiancée has crept away from his bed for a midnight assignation with his son.’

There was such savage anger in the last words that Skye found herself flinching back in her chair, fearful of the cold fury in his voice. But Theo made no move towards her. In fact, from the moment that he had come in the door and found her sitting here, he hadn’t moved an inch. Instead he was standing stock still, just as he had when he’d flicked on the light to see her.

‘N-no—that won’t happen.’

The shake in her voice didn’t come from the moment of fear. Instead, it was all purely feminine awareness. She desperately needed to get her thoughts and her feelings under control so that she could function properly. But functioning at all was almost beyond her; functioning properly was entirely out of the question. And it became more difficult with every second that passed simply because of the way that Theo looked.

She knew he’d been swimming because she’d heard the faint splashing of the water as she’d made her way up from the lower level where her bedroom was to the main terrace. She hadn’t dared to use the lift inside the house in case Cyril woke and heard its faint hum and came to see what was going on, so she had used the outdoor stairs that were carved into the rock of the cliffside, moving hesitantly in the dimly lit darkness.

The moon had been shining down on the swimming pool as she’d passed it, keeping closely to the shadows so as not to be seen. And in the pale light she had seen Theo’s dark head, the flash of his muscular arms as he powered through the water, from one end to the next—a swift, neat turn, and back again. Again and again.

The moonlight had turned him into an eerie, almost unearthly being. His broad chest and back had been bathed with silver, gleaming and beautiful, making her think of a dolphin she had seen out in the bay only that morning. She had stayed there for a few stolen minutes, watching hypnotised, unable to turn away. Her mouth had dried and her heart felt as if it were beating a rapid tattoo in her chest. She could have stayed there all night, but the sudden fear of being seen, either by the man in the pool or his father, had pushed her into action. Fear had sent her hurrying to the pool house where she had waited, nerves stretched taut with apprehension, until she had heard Theo come in the door.

When he’d switched the light on, all the feelings she had experienced outside had flooded back in full force. But in a very different way.

Where outside he had been silver and darkness, elemental, ethereal, a fantasy of a merman, here he was heat and light and physical strength. He was a real man with warm, bronzed skin, still spattered lightly with sparkling water drops. His black eyes burned under lush, thick lashes, and the blood that pulsed through his veins made his body glow with health and masculine vigour.

The moon man had made her heart catch in admiration and astonishment, but she had only wanted to watch and keep her distance from him. This man made her think of life and passion and sex and her own blood heated at the memory of how it had felt to be held in his arms, her head pillowed on the hard, warm width of that chest.

‘Your father is fast asleep. I heard him snoring. He had plenty to drink at dinner.’

‘So did I, but it didn’t exactly guarantee a night’s sleep.’

Theo rubbed the towel over his still wet hair, ruffling it in a way that Skye found shockingly endearing. He looked suddenly young and almost boyish in a way that she would be all kinds of a fool to even think of believing. Theo Antonakos was no boy—and she would do well to remember that. He was all man—and hard and dangerous with it.

‘If it had, you wouldn’t have found the house empty when you arrived.’

He paused, cold black eyes searing over her in sharp assessment.

‘Or was that the idea? Did you have plans of sneaking into my bed and seducing—?’

‘No!’

She couldn’t even let him finish the appalling sentence. Couldn’t let him allow even the thought of such a thing into his mind.

‘No way! That wasn’t what I had in mind at all. As I said, I came to talk.’

Theo’s sigh was weary, resigned, as he raked a hand through his damp hair and slicked it back from his face.

‘Then can it wait until I put some clothes on?’

‘Oh—yes—sorry—of course.’

She was gabbling like an idiot, wondering if he had caught her watching him like a child in a sweet shop, almost drooling over the delights on show.

She must not think like that. Think practical, Skye. Find something to do—to distract you. If she even let in the thought of him stripping off those clinging swimming shorts, rubbing the big body dry…

No!

Such thoughts were far too dangerous to her peace of mind.

What peace of mind? She hadn’t known any such thing since that night, when Theo Antonakos had come into her life like a nuclear explosion. And now she was struggling to deal with the devastation that was the aftermath.

‘Of course. You go and change. Shall I make some coffee?’

‘You really do want to make sure that I have no chance at all of sleeping tonight, don’t you? No coffee. And no wine. Seems to me I’m going to need a clear head for this. There’s some mineral water in the fridge. Glasses in the cupboard above it.’

He had disappeared in the direction of the bedroom by the time that any of his comments really registered on Skye’s already jumbled brain.

You really do want to make sure that I have no chance at all of sleeping tonight, don’t you?

Had he meant that, like her, he had been lying awake, unable to sleep? Was that why he had taken to swimming in the middle of the night?

And if so, then what sort of thoughts had kept him awake and restless?

Don’t go there! she told herself. Don’t risk it!

Because the truth was that she didn’t know which was the greater risk to her mental balance: knowing that Theo had lain awake thinking of her—or knowing that he had not.

She didn’t have time to think, anyway. She had barely found the water and the glasses before Theo was back with her.

He had pulled on a loose navy tee shirt and a pair of jogging trousers. Both items were old and baggy and shouldn’t have been sexy at all. But it didn’t matter what this man wore, he still took her breath away. Perhaps it was because she knew, and remembered so well, just what the body underneath the clothes was like, so that he could have worn an old sack and still have had the impact of a blow to her heart.

She had a nasty little flght with herself to keep her hand from shaking as she filled a glass with the sparkling water and held it out to him. The faint brush of his fingers as he took it from her sent a sensation like an electric shock shooting up her arm and to disguise the betraying reaction she reached for her own glass and gulped down half of it without pausing for breath.

‘So talk.’ Theo had barely touched his own drink before putting the glass back down on the table. He leaned against the wall and folded his arms across his chest, narrowed eyes focusing tightly on her face. ‘You said you wanted to talk—so talk.’

‘Are you going to say anything?’

Oh, damn, she hadn’t meant it to come out like that. She’d planned on being calm and reasonable. On coming round to the point gradually. Instead she’d just blurted out what was uppermost in her mind without a second’s thought.

‘About what?’

‘Oh, don’t play games! You know very well about what! Are you going to say anything to your father?’

Theo’s dark head went back, resting against the door post, his black, gleaming stare impenetrable and impassive in a coldly inscrutable face.

‘My father…’ he said at last, drawling the words out with a slow deliberation that tightened nerves already close to snapping until she felt she wanted to scream. ‘Why should I tell him anything?’

‘Oh!’

The unexpected answer was such a relief that all the tension left Skye in a sudden rush so that she sagged against the nearest chair like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The release from tension was so great that her head was spinning with it and she was totally unable to think of anything beyond the feeling of elation that rushed through her like a flood tide.

‘Oh, thank you!’ She gasped. ‘Thank you! Thank…’

The words shrivelled on her lips as her vision cleared and she caught the way he was looking at her. She saw the dark frown that drew his black brows together, the cold, assessing glance from those jet eyes, and suddenly knew she had made a terrible mistake.

‘You…’

‘I’m not going to tell my father anything,’ Theo stated icily. ‘I think that’s your responsibility.’

‘What?’

Skye had been swallowing a sip of water as he spoke and she knew a moment of real horror as her throat seemed to close around the drink, threatening to choke her. It was only with a struggle that she managed to regain control, and gulp it down. But even then her voice on the question was shrill and raw, as if her vocal cords were still tightly twisted.