Mediterranean Tycoons: Masterful & Married: Marriage At His Convenience / Aristides' Convenient Wife / The Billionaire's Blackmailed Bride

‘And what about me?’ Amber asked quietly, amazed that her voice didn’t break.

‘Amber, we have had some great times together, but now it is over, it has to be. I have reached the age—’ he walked away from her, pacing the length of the room ‘—when it is time for me to settle down. I want a wife, a family, a home, and Christina is going to give me all that.’ Then, spinning on his heel, he walked slowly back towards her.

‘You’re bright and ambitious, I know you have a brilliant future ahead of you. But, for me, Christina is the answer. You understand.’

The numbness that had protected her for the past few hours vanished. He was ripping her heart to shreds with every word he spoke. ‘No, no, I don’t.’ She raised her eyes to meet his. ‘I thought we were a couple, and that this was our home.’ Even as she said the words, she saw the gleam of cynical amusement in his dark eyes as he glanced around the room and back at Amber.

‘Oh, come on, Amber, don’t play the innocent, it does not suit you. This was never meant to be a home, a living area with an open-galleried bedroom and a sybaritic bathroom. Could you see me entertaining my family and friends in this place?’ One dark brow arched sardonically. ‘I think not…’

Amber exploded; her hand swung in a wide arc and smashed across his face. ‘I should have done that last night,’ she yelled. ‘You arrogant, conceited, two-timing bastard.’

Lucas raised a hand to his cheek, and rubbed where she had hit him. ‘Perhaps I deserved that, so I’ll let you get away with it, Amber, but only once,’ he declared grimly. ‘Accept it is over between us and move on. I have.’

She watched the dark stain appear on his cheek where she had hit him, and immediately regretted her action. Involuntarily she raised her hand, intending to stroke the side of his face, but her wrist was caught in an iron grip. ‘No.’

She moved forward and lifted her other hand to rest on the soft wool sweater covering his broad chest. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. But the familiar feel of his hard muscles beneath her fingers sent shivers of delight arcing though her body. She loved this man with all her heart, and helplessly she tilted back her head and looked up into his darkly attractive face. ‘Please, Lucas.’ She felt him stiffen, and she moved even closer, and slid her hand up over his chest and around the nape of his neck.

‘We are so good together, Lucas, you know we are.’ It had been two long months since she had felt the warmth of his caress and she ached for him. Suddenly she was fighting for her man, and using every skill at her disposal. She saw his pupils dilate as her breasts brushed against his hard chest, and involuntarily her fingers trailed with tactile delight up through the hair at the back of his neck. ‘Kiss me, Lucas, you know you want to.’ Gently she urged his head down towards her eager lips.

‘No, Amber.’ His large hands gripped her shoulders to push her away just as she brushed her lips against his, the tip of her tongue darting out to gain access to his mouth. She heard the intake of his breath as his arms jerked her to him and their bodies met in searing contact, and she was lost in the dark, heady hunger of the kiss for an instant, before his hands caught her shoulders and he forced her back at arm’s length.

Lucas Karadines didn’t like the way she affected him. His dark eyes glittered dangerously. His own mother had been addicted to sex, one lover after another until she’d died. Her last lover had kicked a young boy of thirteen out on the street. So he fought the temptation and won. ‘You are a very sexy lady, Amber, but I am not such a bastard as to take what you’re offering. It’s over.’

‘But if you want a wife, why not me? I love you, Lucas, and I thought you loved me,’ Amber pleaded, raising an unsteady hand and tenderly brushing a few black silky strands of his hair from his brow. ‘I could give you children, anything you want.’ She was laying her heart, her life, on the line, begging him. She had lost all pride, all anger, and she didn’t care. She looked deep into his dark eyes, her own beseeching his. She thought she saw a flicker of uncertainty in the depths of his, but she was mistaken.

‘No, Amber.’ A grim smile twisted the corners of his sensual mouth. ‘I never lied to you—I never once mentioned love.’

His words lashed her like a whip flailing her alive; she closed her eyes for an instant, searching her mind. He was right, he had never said he loved her. How had she made such an enormous mistake? His hands fell from her shoulders and she opened her eyes. She could actually see him mentally withdrawing from her as he physically moved back a step.

‘You are a lovely girl, but you are not the wife and mother type.’ His breathing was heavy but his dark eyes held unmistakable, unyielding will-power. ‘You’re a career woman—you compete in a male-dominated industry, and you are as good as, if not better than, most of the men, by all accounts. You wouldn’t last six months as a stay-at-home wife. You would be bored out of your skull. So don’t fool yourself, Amber. You’re strictly lover material.’

She listened with growing horror. ‘Is that really what you think?’ she muttered sickly. ‘All this time you saw me as your lover, a sex object, nothing else.’

He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘The term is not important. What we shared was a mutually agreeable relationship.’ His dark eyes skimmed over her shapely figure and he made no effort to hide his masculine appreciation. ‘And great sex.’

His deliberate sensual scrutiny made her breasts swell in instant awareness, and hot colour flooded her cheeks and he noticed. ‘Be honest, Amber, you’re no shy young maid, never were. You’re a born hedonist, you thrive on sensual pleasure, the pleasure I gave you. But you’re a sophisticated lady—admit it, if we have spent six months together since we met it would be a miracle, and that mostly in bed. Ours was a sexual relationship, nothing more.’

For him maybe, but for Amber it had been everything. She only had to look at him to remember the powerful strength of his all-male body when he possessed her, caressed her. ‘Nothing more,’ she parroted his words with horror.

‘Exactly.’ He sounded relieved, actually believing she had agreed with him. And blithely carried on adding insult to injury. ‘But Christina is different. She is sweet and innocent and has no desire to do anything other than be my wife, and bear my children.’

Her teeth had bitten into her bottom lip as she listened to him praise his Christina, and the salty tang of blood coated her tongue. ‘I was innocent until you seduced me,’ she reminded him, the hurt almost too much to bear. He knew she’d been a virgin when he’d first made love to her. She had given him the greatest gift a woman could give a man, her heart, body and soul, and he had the gall to label her a hedonist…

‘Ah, Amber…’ He shook his dark head in a mocking gesture. ‘You know as well as I do that it was no great moral conviction that kept you a virgin. It was probably the fact you had spent the last four years living with a couple of gay men and their friends and hadn’t much opportunity. You would have jumped into bed with me the first day you arrived at the villa.’ Lucas shot her a cynical smile. ‘With your minuscule bikinis, and designer clothes, you were no retiring violet. You were desperate for a man, and it was my restraint, my strict rule not to take on a new lover without first leaving the old that meant we waited until I had got back from New York. Seduction did not come into it.’

‘I see.’ And she did… She closed her eyes for a brief moment, blocking out the picture of his hard, cynical face, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. He thought of her as a sexy woman who had been easy to take, who could respond to any man’s caress with equal fervour, not just his. Eagerly she had followed where he’d led, plunging the erotic depths with a hunger that had known no bounds, confident that he’d loved her, and everything had been permissible between two lovers. Her own innate honesty forced her to admit it was not all his fault. She had deliberately set out to appear to be the sort of woman she’d imagined he wanted. ‘Hoist by her own petard’ was the phrase that sprang to mind… Lucas did not know her at all, never had, and, worse, did not want to.

‘Tell me, Lucas, if I had held out for a ring, would you have married me?’ Amber demanded, black anger filling her heart at his chauvinistic attitude, never mind his betrayal.

He stared at her, his hard mouth suddenly cruel. ‘With you the question would never arise. If you remember, I did ask you to give up work so we could spend more time together, and you could not even do that. So the answer is no. You’re a thoroughly modern woman, equal to a man, you work hard and play hard.’

‘And your Christina is not?’ She arched one delicate brow in a gesture of mocking disbelief. ‘A year in Switzerland, all those hunky ski instructors,’ she taunted him, the memory of the young girl’s conversation last night still clear in her mind.

That appeared to catch him on the raw, and for a moment he looked almost savage. ‘Leave Christina out of this,’ he ordered curtly. ‘You disappoint me, Amber, I did not think you could sink so low as to maliciously malign a young girl’s reputation, a girl you hardly know,’ he drawled contemptuously.

Amber stared at his hard, cold face, willing herself not to feel hurt by his immediate defence of the girl. Then it hit her. ‘You’ve never slept with Christina, and you think you love her. I’m right, aren’t I?’ she demanded, not sure whether to laugh or cry. Lucas Karadines, a powerful, dynamic businessman viewed with fear and awe by his competitors, was fooled by a pseudo-innocent eighteen-year-old going on eighty.

‘Yes, I love Christina, and I am going to marry her.’ He gave the only answer he could. He wasn’t sure he believed in love. His mother had fallen in love with depressing regularity, when basically it had been sex. He had no intention of making the same mistake. He had chosen carefully and made the commitment to Christina and both of their families in traditional Greek fashion, and he was determined to honour it and make his marriage a success.

Amber stared at him. Oh, heavens, she silently screamed. It was true. She saw the absolute sincerity in his dark eyes, heard it in the tone of his voice, and was convinced. Never mind business, Lucas honestly thought he loved the girl. Her shoulders drooping, she closed her eyes for a second, all the fight draining out of her, and a dull acceptance taking its place. ‘I suppose I’d better go and pack.’

‘No.’ Lucas caught her shoulder and turned her back to face him. ‘Sit down, Amber. I am not so unfeeling I would see you deprived of your home.’

It never was a home, he had made that abundantly clear, but her traitorous limbs gave way beneath her and she sank thankfully down onto the soft cushions. ‘No.’ Amber looked at him towering over her, with all the bitterness of her feelings in her eyes. ‘Then what now, Lucas? If you’re waiting for my blessing, you’re wasting your time.’ He was sliding something from the inside pocket of his jacket—a long manila envelope.

‘You have no need to leave—I am going. I’ll send someone round this afternoon to collect the few things I have here, and you’d better keep these—you will need them.’

The last half-hour had been the hardest of Lucas Karadines’s life. It had taken all his monumental control not to take what Amber had been offering. He would not dare come back himself, because deep down he knew he would not be able to resist making love to her one more time. He dropped the envelope and his set of keys to the apartment down onto the sofa beside her. ‘Goodbye, Amber.’ He hesitated for a second, his night-black eyes lingering on her pale face. ‘I’m…’

‘Just go.’ Her lips twisted; if he said sorry she would kill him. His dark head bent towards her and she felt the brush of his lips against her hair and flinched. She didn’t need his pity. And, flinging her head back, she sat rigidly on the edge of the sofa, her golden eyes hating him.

Lucas straightened up. ‘Look after yourself.’ And, brushing past her, he headed for the door. He opened the door and paused, finally turning to add, ‘By the way, if you’re thinking of taking up the offer Clive Thompson made you, don’t. The man is not to be trusted.’

A harsh laugh escaped her. ‘It takes one to know one. Get out.’ And, picking up a scatter cushion, she flung it at him. It bounced harmlessly off the closed door and fell to the floor.

Amber looked around her at the apartment that she had mistakenly thought was a home with new eyes, and groaned out loud. Lucas was right. How could she have been so stupid, so gullible? She had tried to add a few touches, the scatter cushions, a couple of framed photographs of her mother, and Tim. A painting she had bought on a trip around a gallery with Spiro. The rug was the only thing in the place that she and Lucas had chosen together. It was exactly as Lucas had said: a bachelor pad, or a love-nest.

She had to get out, she thought brutally. It didn’t matter where as long it was somewhere that did not remind her of Lucas. But first she had to pack up his clothes—hadn’t he said he was sending someone over to collect them?

She jumped to her feet and the manila envelope fell from her knee to the floor; she bent down and picked it up. Slitting open the envelope, she withdrew a folded document. She read it, her eyes widening in amazement that quickly turned to fury. Her first thought was to rip it up, but she hesitated… The paper dropped from her hand to flutter back to the floor.

It was the deeds for the apartment in her name, and it was dated two weeks ago. She felt sick and defiled; he had paid her off like some cheap whore. Perhaps not cheap, she amended, but her fury knew no bounds. She marched into the kitchen and took the scissors from the kitchen drawer, and then headed straight upstairs. With grim determination she slid back the wardrobe door. Earlier she had run her hands over Lucas’s clothes, in need of reassurance. Now she touched them for a completely different reason.

Working quickly, Amber emptied the wardrobe and drawers of every item that belonged to Lucas, and packed them in one suitcase. That told her something. Her mouth tightened in a rare grimace of cynicism. If she had needed any further convincing that Lucas had considered her nothing more than a convenient bed partner, the fact that he had left so few clothes in the place she had thought was his home said it all.

When a little man called a few hours later and asked for Mr Karadines’s luggage she handed over the suitcase without a word, and closed the door in the man’s face. She only wished she could close the door to her heart as firmly on the memory of Lucas Karadines.

A few hours later on the other side of London, Lucas Karadines stood in the middle of his hotel bedroom and stared in fury at the pair of trousers his father’s valet was holding out to him.

‘I’m afraid, sir, I’ve checked, and all three suits in the luggage I collected from the lady’s apartment are the same.’ The little wizened man was having the greatest difficulty keeping the smile from his face. ‘The fly panel has been rather roughly cut out of all of them.’

A torrent of Greek curses turned the air blue as Lucas stormed across the room and picked up the telephone and began pressing out the number he knew by heart. Then suddenly he stopped halfway through, and replaced the receiver. No, there was no point—Amber was out of his life and he wanted it to stay that way. But a reluctant smile quirked the corners of his firm mouth. He should have expected some such thing. Amber was a passionate character in every way; it was what had drawn him to her in the first place. A shadow darkened his tanned features as he instructed the valet to press another suit. With brutal honesty he recognised Amber had some justification. She should never have discovered by a third party their relationship was over, and certainly not in so public a manner.

CHAPTER FOUR

CARRYING her mug of coffee, Amber made her way to the kitchen. Draining the last dregs, she rinsed the cup in the sink, and dried it with the tea towel.

It was little more than a week since Lucas had told her he was marrying Christina and walked out of her life. She had gone to work as usual, and she had waited. Waited and hoped for a miracle—for Lucas to change his mind. But by Wednesday she had bowed to the inevitable and set the wheels in motion to move out of the apartment. And if in the deepest corner of her heart hope lingered, she ignored it.

When Spiro had called her Sunday afternoon from Athens, confirming that the engagement party of Lucas Karadines and Christina Aristides the previous evening had been a great success, it was simply the final nail in the coffin that held all her dreams.

If she needed any more confirmation, she only had to look at this morning’s newspaper lying on the kitchen bench open at the gossip page. A picture of the couple was prominently displayed. She crushed up the paper and wrapped the coffee mug in it. Then she carefully placed it on the top of the rest of the kitchen implements already packed in the large tea chest that sat in the middle of the kitchen floor. Finished…

She had applied on Friday to have today, Monday, off work, because realistically she’d known she would be moving out. Everything was packed, the For Sale sign had been erected an hour earlier by the carpenter employed by the estate agent she had consulted to dispose of the apartment. She could not live in it, and the proceeds would help some charity. She did not care any more.

Since the night at the London hotel, and the sleepless nights since, she had gone beyond feeling pain into a state of complete detachment. It was not completely Lucas’s fault. She should have remembered ‘To thine own self be true.’ She had transformed herself virtually overnight into a sophisticated lady in her determination to win Lucas, and that was how he had seen her. She had never let him see the naive young country girl she had been, who just happened to have a gift for figures. Now it was too late. He had fallen in love with someone else, and she would never be that girl again anyway.

On Saturday she’d made a start on getting her life back. She had rented a small cottage with a garden in the village of Flamstead, within manageable commuting distance of the City. Amber recognised she had loved unwisely and too much, but she had silently vowed no man would ever be able to hurt her like that again.

Amber walked back into the living room, and glanced at the gold watch on her wrist. The removal firm was due to arrive at three. Another two hours to kill.

The telephone was still connected: she could call Tim, but she had no desire to talk to him or Spiro for that matter. She was still mad at Spiro’s revelation yesterday that, at the engagement party, for a joke he had hinted to his grandfather and Lucas that his engagement to Amber might be next. Spiro was a wickedly mischievous devil—he could not help himself.

She heard the knock on the front door and sighed with relief. Good, the removal men were early, almost unheard of in London. Walking over to the door, she opened it, the beginnings of a smile curving her generous mouth. At last something was going her way. Her smile vanished, her mouth falling open in shock as she found herself staring into the hard black eyes of Lucas Karadines.

Her first instinct was to slam the door in his face but he anticipated her action by brushing past her and into the centre of the room.

Mechanically, she closed the door behind him. ‘What do you want?’ she demanded, her mind spinning, fighting to control the tremor in her voice and the swift surge of hope his appearance aroused in her. On a completely feminine note Amber wished she were wearing something better than a battered old cotton shirt and a pair of scruffy black leggings from her student days.

Spinning around to face her, Lucas regarded her silently for what seemed an interminable length of time, but Amber quickly gathered from the harsh expression on his dark, slightly saturnine features that he had certainly not sought her out for reconciliation.

‘I said, what do you want?’ she repeated coolly. He looked dynamic and infinitely masculine, his casual jeans and heavy wool sweater barely detracting from the raw vitality of the man. His eyes didn’t leave hers for a second, and she began to feel a rising tide of bitter resentment as the blood raced through her veins in the old familiar way.

‘I want to study what a woman scorned really looks like,’ Lucas stated with studied indolence, his eyes raking over her from the top of her head, over her face, her hair hanging loose about her shoulders, down over the firm thrust of her breasts clearly outlined against the fine cotton, then lower to her slim hips and long legs perfectly moulded by the black leggings. His narrowed gaze rested on her bare feet, then back to her face.

‘I ignored the destruction of a few suits,’ he drawled silkily, taking a step towards her.

She swallowed painfully, colour flooding her cheeks. She’d forgotten about her futile attempt at revenge: the mangled suits, and all the gifts he had ever given her flung on top. But it was as nothing to what he had done to her. Her head lifted fractionally. Pride uppermost. ‘You can afford it,’ she snapped.

One eyebrow lifted slightly. ‘A bagatelle, I grant you, compared to the price of this apartment. I see you have wasted no time in trying to sell it,’ he opined silkily and moved closer. ‘I ignored the insult intended by the return of the presents I gave you.’ And, catching hold of her hand, he drew her towards him, despite the struggle she made to break free. His glance spearing her ruthlessly, he added, ‘But I will never allow you to marry Spiro simply so he can get his hands on his inheritance before he is of age. I’ll see you in hell first.’

The statement was quiet and deadly, and Amber suddenly realised his temper was held in check by a tenuous thread. ‘Let go of me,’ she demanded, her own anger rising. as she tried to escape his steel-like grasp.

‘I will when I have your promise you will stay away from Spiro.’

She almost laughed out loud. Lucas actually thought Spiro had been serious when he had voiced the prospect of marrying her to his grandfather. But she saw no reason to make it easy for Lucas. How dared he come here and threaten her?

‘I can live with who I like and I can marry who I like, and it has damn all to do with you. In case you have forgotten, you are engaged to be married. In fact, I am amazed you could tear yourself away from the arms of your fiancée so quickly after your betrothal. Not as passionate as you hoped, hmm?’ she prompted. ‘Now, let go of my arm and get lost.’ And with a fierce tug she freed her wrist from his grasp and swiftly stepped around him, heading for the stairs.

With an angry oath he spun around and caught the back of her shirt, bringing her to an abrupt halt. She strained forwards and he tugged harder so she fell back against him, the buttons popping off her shirt at the rough treatment. She tried to elbow him in the stomach. But he quickly turned her around and held her hard against the long length of his impressive frame. She began to struggle in earnest, striking out at him with her fists, making little impression on the broad, muscular wall of his chest.

‘Let go of me, you great brute.’ Her temper finally exploded. ‘I know your game. Not content with marrying a poor kid half your age for her father’s business, you’re so bloody greedy that you’re terrified Spiro will manage to get his hands on his half of the business. God, you make me sick!’ she told him furiously.

Her wrists were caught and held together with effortless ease behind her in one large hand, his dark eyes leaping with rage as they burned into hers. ‘You foul-mouthed little bitch! You would marry a man you know is gay simply to get back at me.’

‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ she jeered. ‘I don’t give a toss about you.’

‘But you enjoyed what I could give you,’ he said harshly as though he wasn’t really making a statement but remembering. ‘Something Spiro is not capable of.’