Mediterranean Tycoons

‘Join us for a drink.’ Ted made the conventional offer.

‘Some other time, perhaps,’ Nadine cut in before Marcus could speak and, linking her arm firmly through the tall Greek’s, she smiled. ‘Your friends have already eaten, Marcus, and I am starving. You did promise me dinner.’ She pouted, her long red fingernails stroking down the sleeve of his jacket. ‘For starters,’ she purred.

Eloise suppressed a grimace of distaste at Nadine’s obvious seduction technique.

‘Nadine, darling, I’m sure you can wait a while.’ He smiled at his girlfriend, but the tone of his voice warned her not to argue.

Seats were pulled out and another bottle of champagne ordered.

‘To old friends.’ Marcus raised his glass and looked directly at Eloise. Her eyes met and fused with his and for a moment she was transported back in time to a Greek island, and her heart raced again as it had then, the first time they’d met.

‘And hopefully new ones,’ Marcus continued, addressing Ted.

They all touched glasses, and Eloise took a hasty swallow of the sparkling liquid. She was shocked at the rush of awareness simply being in Marcus’s company had aroused in her. She had thought herself over him long ago, and she was grateful for Nadine’s timely contribution to the sudden silence.

‘Marcus and I have known each other for almost two years and he has never mentioned you. So when did you meet him?’ Nadine demanded, her gimlet eyes fixed on Eloise.

‘I was on holiday with my m…sister, Chloe,’ she stammered, feeling the colour rise in her face. ‘We had rented a villa on the island of Rykos in Greece. Chloe was a friend of Marcus’s Uncle Theo, who was the developer and had built the villa along with five others. When we held a pool party Theo brought Marcus along to the party and we…’

Marcus almost snorted in disgust. ‘How is your sister?’ he cut in abruptly. The detective he had hired had taken almost a year to unravel Chloe Baker’s various names, before discovering the woman had never had a sister but a daughter with the name of Smith. Probably the most common surname in the English language…

Eloise glanced across the table at Marcus. Hooded dark eyes hard as steel stared back at her. Did he know she’d lied all those years ago? But her mother had insisted she called her Chloe, and pretend to be sisters. At thirty-six, Chloe was not going to admit to having a grown-up daughter, and Eloise had agreed. Or was he frightened she would tell his girlfriend all the details of their brief romance? He must really care for Nadine.

‘My sister died over three years ago,’ Eloise mumbled. She hated lying, and suddenly realised there was no need to any more—her mother was dead. But now was not the time or the place.

‘I am sorry.’ Marcus mouthed the polite response but there was a singularly lack of sympathy in his expression. ‘Chloe was a quite remarkable woman.’

She was, Eloise thought sadly, and if it had not been for her mother, she would never have been able to set up in business herself, but she had never really got to know her mother well. Pregnant at seventeen by a sailor, Tom Smith, Chloe had married him, and divorced him three months after Eloise was born. Then she had left Eloise with her grandparents to be brought up in the small Northumberland coastal town of Alnmouth and disappeared. Four years later she returned with a different name after another failed marriage, loaded down with presents for her little girl, and apparently had become a very successful businesswoman. From then on she popped in every year or so…

For Eloise her mother had been a fairytale figure, beautiful and elegant in designer clothes, bringing gifts. It was only after the death of her grandparents, when she had completed her first year in art college, that her mother had actually spent some time with her. Chloe had taken a real interest in what Eloise was doing and declared herself fascinated by her daughter’s skilful designs, and even suggested they go on holiday to Greece and so they had taken their first and last holiday together on Rykos.

‘Sorry, I have brought back sad memories.’ Marcus rose from the table and held out his hand to Eloise. ‘Come dance with me and blow away the cobwebs of the past.’

‘But—’ Nadine said sharply.

‘Then, Nadine, we will eat, I promise.’ He shot his girlfriend a brilliant smile, and a brief glance at Ted. ‘With your permission, of course, old man?’ he asked while clasping Eloise’s hand and urging her to her feet, not waiting for an answer.

‘Nadine is going to die of hunger if you don’t feed her soon,’ Eloise tried to joke, as Marcus slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her firmly against the long powerful length of his body.

He was taller than she remembered; she had to tilt her head back to look up at him, but that was a mistake. The years had been kind to him, and close up he was even more staggeringly handsome than she remembered. An aggressively virile, sophisticated male, he exuded an aura of raw sexuality that the formal tailored dinner suit and white silk shirt did nothing to hide, and it terrified her.

‘Nadine’s hunger is never for food,’ he returned, a mockingly sensual smile curving his wide mouth. ‘She is a model; she doesn’t eat enough to feed a bird. You, on the other hand, are every man’s fantasy of the female form.’ His hand at her back slowly stroked up her spine and just as slowly down to settle rather low on her bottom, while his other hand clasped hers and held it firmly against his broad chest.

‘Are you implying I’m fat?’ she said with mock horror, fighting to appear the sophisticated woman when inside she was quaking.

Marcus let his gaze drop to the firm thrust of her obviously braless breasts against the gold fabric, and then back to her face. ‘God forbid! You have the perfect figure. Full and fat are not the same thing.’ And the hand he had held firm against his chest somehow contrived to be held against hers, his knuckles brushing against the soft upper swell of her breast.

She should have been horrified. She had never been this close to a man in four years, never wanted to be. But now, to her utter amazement, she felt her nipples harden against the fine silk of her top, and she had to drop her eyes to his chest to mask the sudden flare of desire that heated her face. A tiny pulse at the base of her throat was racing, and she was appalled yet secretly thrilled by her helpless response to his innately sensual masculinity.

‘I do believe you are blushing, Eloise,’ Marcus teased as he moved her expertly around the floor to the sexy soft tones of a well-known Barry White recording.

‘It’s hot in here.’ She made herself look up at him.

Marcus’s perceptive black eyes ran over her now scarlet face, and deliberately he tightened his arm around her, bringing her into impossibly close contact with his long, lean length. He felt the tremor in her body, and he fought to mask the cynical smile of masculine satisfaction that threatened his oh, so caring features, even as he fought to mask his own body’s instant arousal. He dipped his head and whispered softly in her ear, ‘And getting hotter by the minute.’

He was flirting with her, Eloise knew, and she should have been angry, but the reverse was true. The slender fingers of her hand flexed, curved into his broad shoulder, and clung. His warm breath, his hard body, the softly murmured words all conspired to turn Eloise’s bones to mush; her legs felt wobbly, and her heart felt as if it would burst. It was as if the trauma of the past had been swept away and once again she was the adolescent teenager, totally besotted by the sophisticated overpowering charm of Marcus Kouvaris.

‘Your girlfriend,’ Eloise got out. What was Marcus trying to do to her? And in the middle of the dance floor with Nadine watching. ‘Nadine,’ she choked.

‘Forget Nadine. I did, the moment I saw you again,’ Marcus declared throatily, and observed the deepening colour in her cheeks with a cynical cool. God! The woman could blush on demand, but nothing of his thoughts showed on his chiselled features as his gaze roamed over the perfect oval of her face. ‘Why did you leave me without a word, Eloise?’ he asked softly, his dark eyes looking soulfully down into hers.

‘But I thought you left me.’ In shock at her own reactions, she answered honestly. ‘I waited ten days for you to contact me. Then we had to leave.’ She hadn’t wanted to, but her mother had insisted. ‘But I left you a note with my address and telephone number with the maid.’

‘My father died from the heart attack, and by the time the funeral was over it was two weeks before I could return to the villa. It was empty, no sign of a maid or a letter.’

‘I’m sorry about your father.’ Eloise’s green eyes shaded with compassion.

‘Yes, well, it was a few years ago now.’ He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘But I definitely never received a note from you, Eloise, believe me.’

With his hand stroking her back, and his expression sincere, she believed him. ‘I do. These things happen,’ she mumbled.

‘I guess the time wasn’t right for us then.’ He squeezed her gently and her pulse rate went into overdrive. ‘But the past is past and I am delighted to have met you again. I often wondered what happened to you,’ he said smoothly.

Wondered? Some understatement; a bitter smile tightened Marcus’s mouth. When he’d returned to the island and found her gone, he’d ruefully conceded she was the one that got away and tried to dismiss her from his mind. He didn’t chase after women, they chased after him, but she had haunted his dreams for years. It was only after Theo’s death and he was left with settling the man’s affairs that he had hired someone to find her sister Chloe, and only recently he had discovered Eloise Smith was the daughter, not the sister, of the devious late Chloe Baker. Seeing her with Ted had finally cured him of the romantic picture he’d carried in his head of an innocent young girl forced by her wicked mother into fraud! The gods must be laughing, he thought irreverently. But he allowed none of his thoughts to show. He eased her slightly away from him.

‘I would love to see you again and catch up with what you are doing.’ He gazed down into her beautiful face. ‘Have dinner with me tomorrow night?’ He held her closer, one long leg easing between hers, as he moved her skilfully in a turn. ‘Please.’ He watched the green eyes widen with a mixture of fear and excitement, and almost laughed out loud. She had good reason to fear him, the devious little witch—but her sort could never resist a challenge, he knew; he’d met enough in his time.

‘Will your girlfriend mind?’ The friction of his hard thigh against hers, even through the thickness of their clothes, was enough to send every nerve in her body hay-wire and Eloise said the first thing that entered her bemused brain.

‘Not at all. Nadine and I understand each other; we are casual friends, nothing more.’ And, easing her slightly away from him, he added, ‘But I’m forgetting your boyfriend, Ted.’ This time, Marcus could not keep the hard edge of cynicism out of his tone. ‘Will he object to you dating another man?’

Eased from the close contact with his lithe body, Eloise did not know whether to be relieved or aggrieved. He aroused a host of sensations she had never thought she would experience again and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Relief won.

‘You’re kidding.’ She chuckled. ‘Ted is a charming man but he isn’t my boyfriend. Tonight is a business dinner, nothing more.’ That Marcus could imagine even for a moment that she would go out with a man old enough to be her father was ludicrous, and consequently she told him the truth.

‘In that case, give me your telephone number.’ His eyes narrowed on her laughing face and his large body tensed as he let her go. Was she up to her late mother’s tricks, and so sure of success that she had readily admitted her involvement with Ted Charlton was simply business? Marcus needed to know more, but this wasn’t the right time to question her, with Nadine waiting at the table for him and Ted watching Eloise like a drooling fool.

Eloise felt the sudden tension in his body, just before his arm fell from her waist; her puzzled gaze shot to his but his expression was bland. Then she realised it was because the music had stopped.

‘Your number, Eloise?’ Marcus murmured as, with one hand lightly in the centre of her back, he urged her towards the table.

Still in a state of shock at the unexpected meeting and her own response to Marcus, Eloise reeled off her number. ‘You will never remember it,’ and added, ‘but our company, KHE, designer jewellery, is in the directory.’

She did not see his strong handsome face harden into disgust at the mention of designer jewellery, or the flare of white-hot fury in his dark eyes, as he stood behind her and pulled out her chair. By the time she was seated and she had recovered some slight control over her racing pulse and scattered nerves enough to join in the general conversation, and finally look at Marcus, he was all urbane charm and about to leave with Nadine.

‘A very impressive man,’ Ted said as Eloise watched Marcus and Nadine stroll off to where their table awaited them. The maître d’ stood hovering around the pair like a mother hen. But then, a man of Marcus Kouvaris’s power and wealth commanded that kind of attention wherever he went, Eloise thought wryly.

‘Yes, Ted.’ She sighed and turned her attention back to Ted. ‘Nadine is a lucky woman.’

‘No, you’re wrong there, Eloise. She hasn’t a hope in hell of catching Kouvaris. But you—you watch out. Take it from a man who knows his own sex. I saw the way Kouvaris looked, and danced with you. But I have heard rumours about his womanising, and you are far too nice a lady for a man of his reputation.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ Eloise said softly. ‘But I don’t think you need worry.’ And, with a swift glance at the other couple, the black head touching the blonde, she grinned ruefully back at Ted. ‘You’re right, he’s way out of my league.’

They finished off their dinner with coffee, and Ted persuaded Eloise to make a night of it, so they stayed to watch the late-night cabaret, and dance. It was a fun evening, and Eloise was yawning widely by the time Ted took her home in a taxi.

At the door of the town house where Eloise lived and worked, Ted smiled teasingly down at her. ‘I won’t come in, before you ask, but thank you for a lovely evening, Eloise, and you can tell your partners they have nothing to worry about. I will invest. I’ll be in touch with Harry in the morning to do the deal. Okay?’ Planting a brief kiss on her cheek, he said, ‘Good night.’

Letting herself into the elegant entrance hall, Eloise ran lightly up the staircase, and stopped at the first floor. She glanced at her wristwatch, and grimaced. Three a.m. It was far too late to call on Katy and Harry now and tell them the good news and she turned to mount the next flight of stairs.

Strictly speaking, the house was Eloise’s, but it was also the biggest asset of the company. The basement was the work room, the ground floor the showroom and offices, the first floor was Katy and Harry’s apartment, the second floor Eloise’s, and the attic apartment was rented by a gay couple.

Julian and Jeff were two beautiful young men. Julian earned his living as a freelance photographer and had made up a fantastic catalogue for KHE jewellery, and also talked quite a few models into wearing it, and that had been instrumental in getting the firm noticed and into several of the glossy magazines. Jeff worked in the showroom of KHE and was great at selling. The female customers adored him, and the male customers, while taking his advice, were not threatened by his beauty. For Eloise it was the ideal set-up; she loved the house and felt perfectly safe.

‘Is that you, Eloise?’ A stage whisper broke into Eloise’s thoughts and, swinging around, she ran lightly back down the stairs and straight into the arms of Harry.

‘Break out the champagne, folks. Ted is going to come in with us,’ she said as Harry swung her around and into the open door of their apartment where Katy was waiting looking, thankfully, very well, if rather round.

‘You’re sure?’ Katy grasped her arm and pulled her into the sitting room. ‘Tell all.’

Half an hour later her two friends had the whole story.

‘So…’ Katy looked mischievous but beautiful with her black curly hair and big brown eyes; she fixed Eloise with a speculative glance. ‘We can take it the business will expand, much like my waistline. But what about this Mr Kouvaris? Wasn’t that the name of the chap you met, and then left you on that holiday with your mother?’

Immediately on the defensive, Eloise said, ‘Marcus didn’t leave me—he was called away because his father was ill, and apparently the old man died.’ It was strange to be saying his name out loud after five years of trying to forget it, and stupidly she could feel herself blushing. ‘It was no big deal and look, it’s four o’clock in the morning. We’ll talk tomorrow.’

She was still trying to convince herself of the fact ages later lying in her queen-sized bed, unable to sleep. She did not want to take a sleeping tablet the doctor had prescribed. She hadn’t used them in years, and simply seeing Marcus Kouvaris again was not going to drive her into taking one.

CHAPTER TWO

INSTEAD she practised her relaxation exercises, turned on her back, and let her mind roam freely back to her holiday in Greece.

Eloise had been carrying a tray of drinks out on to the terrace when she had first seen Marcus. He was standing next to her mother and Theo Toumbis by the edge of the swimming pool, laughing at something her mother had said. Eloise had nearly dropped the tray, such was the instant effect of his sheer male beauty on her teenage heart. Dressed casually in white shorts, and a shirt open down the front revealing his muscular chest with a sprinkling of black body hair, and long legs glazed in gold by the afternoon sun, the man looked like the reincarnation of a Greek god to Eloise’s naïve eyes and she had stood transfixed simply staring at him.

‘Stop loitering, sis, we are dying of thirst here.’ Her mother’s command had the ten or so people around the pool turning to look at her, including Marcus.

Eloise blushed scarlet, and for a second Marcus’s eyes met hers, before she dropped her head and stepped forward.

Miraculously he appeared at her side. ‘Here, let me take that. A beautiful young girl like you should be waited on, not the other way around.’ And that was how it had started…

He’d introduced himself as Theo’s nephew and had encouraged her to strip off the long cotton shift that concealed her white skinned, bikini-clad body, and join him in the pool. Marcus in his swimming trunks was enough to make any woman weak at the knees, and Eloise had been no exception. He had talked and teased and flirted with her and by the end of the evening he knew she was an unattached nineteen-year-old student on holiday abroad for the first time in her life with her sister Chloe who had rented the villa.

Eloise had hated lying to him, but her mother had insisted no one should know they were mother and daughter, and it had seemed a small price to pay to spend time with her mother. Eloise knew her mother loved her in her own way; she had proved it when after the funeral of her parents Chloe had not even minded that they had left all they owned to Eloise, including the house. Eloise had felt terrible, and it had taken all her powers of persuasion to get her mum to at least take the money from the sale of the house. Even so her mum suggested she set up a joint account and they could share the proceeds. Eloise happily agreed, but never touched the account until after her mother’s death.

Stirring restlessly on the bed, Eloise ran the tip of her tongue over her full lips; it seemed like only yesterday she had felt the touch of Marcus’s lips on hers for the first time. Sighing, she rolled over on her stomach and buried her head in the pillow, the memories coming thick and fast.

Before Marcus had finally left, well after midnight, he’d gathered Eloise gently into his arms and kissed her, and from that moment she knew she was in love.

At ten the next morning Marcus had turned up in an open-topped sports car, and whisked her away to the other side of the island.

‘Come on, sweetheart.’ Marcus stopped the car only a few feet away from the edge of a cliff, stepped out and was holding open the passenger door with one hand and a picnic basket in the other with a blanket over his arm. ‘We’re going to have a picnic.’

‘Here?’ Eloise glanced around the rocky outcrop not more that a yard square.

‘Trust me.’ Marcus grinned, and she did.

The steps were cut deep into an almost vertical cliff, with an old rope strung along the cliff face as a handrail. It was the scariest walk Eloise had ever experienced in her young life, and when she finally stepped onto the smooth sand at the base of the cliff her legs were trembling. Marcus dropped the hamper and the blanket on the white sand and gathered her into his arms.

‘All right?’

Fighting to steady her erratic breathing, whether it was from the descent or the sensation of being enfolded against his hard, lean, scantily-clad body, she did not know, Eloise looked around and then up into his grinning face. ‘It’s perfect.’ It was a totally secluded horseshoe shape of sand that led down to sparkling blue sea.

After a swim, they shared a meal of cold meat, chicken, salad, and fresh crusty bread, washed down with champagne.

‘You’re spoiling me.’ Eloise sighed, lying back on the blanket, replete and perfectly happy.

Propped up on one elbow, Marcus’s dark eyes sparkled with amusement and something more as they met hers. Suddenly the clear summer air shimmered with tension. ‘This is nothing to what I would like to do for you,’ he murmured huskily, the index finger of one hand gently outlining her lips. ‘For your mouth,’ he husked; the finger trailed down her throat, and lingered for a moment on the pulse beating madly there. ‘For your elegant neck,’ and then lower to the valley between her breasts. ‘For your luscious breasts.’ His voice thickened.

Eloise felt as though she was touched by fire, every nerve-end in her body tingling with vibrant life. She linked her hands around his neck, her fingers tangling in the silky black hair of his head. Marcus raised his head and moved so he was straddling her trembling body, and then gently brought his mouth down on hers, the tip of his tongue outlining her lips and, as her mouth opened, plunging deep into the moist sweet depths. Electric excitement thrilled through her, the rub of his thighs against the outside of her hips incredibly erotic, and as his mouth followed the path his finger had so recently taken, her excitement built higher and higher.

He buried his head in the valley between her breasts, and somehow her bikini top was no more. She trembled violently as he murmured something huskily in Greek, before his tongue licked across the crown of her breast, and very gently suckled the rosy tip in his mouth.

A lightning flare of response struck her without warning, and her body arched up against his hard, lean frame, brushing his groin in helpless response.

Marcus lifted his head, and gazed down into her dazed green eyes. ‘You like that,’ he husked. With one hand he stroked down from her breast to the tiny waist to lay flat on her belly. ‘Tell me what more you like, my Eloise?’ he demanded throatily, while his mouth found her other breast and repeated the sensual assault.

Eloise had never experienced anything like it before, yet somehow it all seemed natural—Marcus, the kiss, his touch. Tremor after tremor coursed through her veins as his other hand swept down the length of her body, from hips to thigh to calf and back up. His touch scorched her sensitive skin like a brand, and her breasts ached with a pleasure that she did not know existed, creating a need for more and more of the miraculous sensations.

His long fingers effortlessly slipped under the last scrap of material covering her nakedness, and suddenly Eloise tensed in innocent fear of where her wild emotions were leading. Her hands fell to push against his chest. ‘No, no.’ He was going too far, too fast…