Читать книгу Mediterranean Tycoons: Masterful & Married - Jacqueline Baird - Страница 12

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.’

If Amber had not known better, she might have thought he was jealous on a personal level, but she knew he was only worried about retaining complete control of the company. Once Spiro came of age, heaven knew what he would do with his share. He was a loose cannon in the business sense, her own intelligence told her that. But it was still no reason for Lucas to try and bully her.

‘How would you know what Spiro is capable of?’ she taunted him. ‘He could be bisexual. But it does not really matter because Spiro is a friend, and with you for an uncle he needs all the friends he can get,’ she opined scathingly.

‘And of course you have no ulterior motive in befriending Spiro,’ Lucas drawled cynically. ‘What did my nephew promise you for marrying him—a percentage of his inheritance, or is it pure, old-fashioned revenge you’re after?’

He towered over her, dwarfing her not inconsiderable height. Suddenly she became aware of the hard heat of his body. His aroused body! Her eyes clashed with his, and his darkened as the chemistry between them renewed itself with frightening force.

‘Certainly not his body, we both know that is not his scene,’ Lucas drawled huskily, his dark gaze moving down to the luscious outline of her lips.

Amber could not help it. She regarded him hungrily, his harshly etched features as familiar to her as her own. She lowered her eyes in case he might see the need, the hunger flooding through her, and suddenly she became aware that in the struggle her shirt had come open almost to her waist. One firm breast was completely exposed, the other only partially covered. But she was not alone in her discovery; Lucas’s sharply indrawn breath and something in his eyes that had always warned her in the past of his stirring hunger for sex made her tremble. His free hand slid cool fingers down her flushed cheeks, circling the outline of her full mouth.

Amber realised she should be fighting him, but could only gaze at him mesmerised as his hand captured the gentle curve of her nape, and electric tension filled the air.

‘Christos! But you probably could turn Spiro!’ He laughed harshly. ‘You are sinfully sexy.’ His gaze swept down to her bare breasts, and her nipples peaked in telling arousal; she was incapable of hiding her response to him. In that second Lucas knew he should never have come back here—she was utterly irresistible.

Speechless, Amber remained pinned against him, her pulse racing wildly out of control, and suddenly she realised with blinding clarity she did not want to hide her response. The musky scent of masculine arousal teased her nostrils, and, as she felt the muscles of his powerful thighs pressing against her, she tilted back her head and saw his eyes were all black pupil, his desire a primitive need as great as her own. Involuntarily her back arched ever so slightly, lifting her breasts to greater prominence.

She heard his guttural curse a moment before his mouth found hers, kissing her with a bruising, demanding hunger, grinding her lips back against her teeth. A wild, basic recklessness filled her, and she responded with a fiery fervour, her mouth opening to his. She forgot he was engaged to another. She forgot he had betrayed her. There was only the moment…

He kissed her with a searing passion, and she shuddered, responding to his passion, matching it with her own. The kiss they exchanged was primitive and out of control. Every bit of Amber burned with a need, a hunger that was almost pain, and when he trailed sharp, biting kisses down her throat and finally closed his teeth over one pouting nipple she whimpered, but not with pain.

Her hands were set free, and instead of pushing him away she gloried in her freedom to touch him. Her hands worked frenziedly beneath his sweater. Lucas helped her by lifting his head and tearing his sweater off, before hauling her back against him. Her fingers traced over the breadth of his chest, finding the hard male nipples in the silky mat of hair and doing some tantalising of her own. It had been months and she hadn’t realised how needy she had been.

Lucas lifted her high in his arms and laid her down on the hardwood floor in one smooth motion. ‘Damn you, Amber,’ he growled, following her down, his chiselled features dark with passion.

His words hurt and angered her, but nothing could stop the storm of desire sweeping through her. He removed her leggings and briefs with enviable ease, while Amber fumbled with the belt of his trousers; quickly he guided her hands and in a second he was almost naked.

She heard the sharp intake of his breath as her fingers slid along his thigh and his mouth ground down on hers with furious greed. Their bodies met with a searing impact that made her shudder with pleasure.

Lucas lifted his head, his black eyes sweeping almost violently over her naked body. His head bent and he suckled the hard, aching peak of her breast as swiftly he parted her legs. Every other time he had enjoyed making love to her long and slow, teasing and tantalizing, drawing out the experience for ages. But this time it was like a dam bursting, sweeping everything before it, as without hesitating he positioned himself between her slender thighs and joined them fiercely together.

Amber gasped and writhed, half mad with wanting him, the hardness of the floor, the anger not love that fuelled the joining—none of it mattered. It was enough he was here with her—in her—and if it was to be the last time, she didn’t care. He wanted her.

Hot and breathless bodies wet with sweat, they moved together in a mind-blowing, consuming passion. The climax when it came was a shuddering ecstatic release that lifted Amber to another universe, where her mind closed down, and the body was everything. The ecstatic shivers went on and on long after Lucas lay heavily on top of her, the rasping sound of his breathing the most wonderful music to Amber’s ears.

She refused to believe he could behave like this with her and yet love someone else, and when he moved to roll off her she followed him around. Sprawled across his wide chest, still joined, she looked into his darkly flushed handsome face, but his eyes were closed.

‘Lucas,’ she tenderly murmured his name, and, reaching up, she brushed the sweat-slicked hair from his brow. Slowly his eyes opened and he looked at her with such contempt she almost cried out.

‘Amber,’ he grated, mockingly brushing her off him as if he were swatting a fly and jumping to his feet, as though he could not get away from her quickly enough.

She lay where he had left her and watched him. He had not removed his shoes, and he should have looked stupid with his trousers around his ankles, but he didn’t. She let her eyes stray over every perfect inch of his bronzed body, committing every curve and muscle, pore and hair to memory, because she instinctively knew this was the very last time she would ever see him this way.

His dark eyes wandered insolently over her as he pulled up his trousers. The taut line of his mouth gave way to a thin, cruel smile. ‘Christos.’ He laughed harshly, and slipped his sweater over his head. Adjusting the sleeves, he added, ‘I was right about you—as sexy as sin and far too seductive to wed.’

Lucas knew he was being cruel, but it was a pure defence mechanism. He could not believe what he had just done! He had lost control completely, and he hated himself for it. He was strongly puritanical when it came to women, totally monogamous for as long as the relationship lasted, and he had every intention of being totally faithful to his wife. Hell! He almost groaned out loud. Betrothed three days to Christina, and already…

‘You’re no saint,’ Amber’s voice cut into his tortured thoughts.

His black eyes roamed over her lovely face, her cheeks burning with angry colour. She was exquisite, and briefly he closed his eyes, a deep black pit opening up before him, his supreme self-confidence shaken to its core as for a moment he doubted his decision to marry Christina. He opened his eyes. It was too late now. He was Greek, first and foremost, he was engaged to a Greek girl, his father was delighted, Christina’s father was ecstatic. He had made the right decision. It was simply he had been celibate for too long, he told himself, and almost believed it…

‘So much for your moral code, off with the old before the new,’ Amber declared fiercely, breaking the tension-filled silence, and, sitting up, she pulled the shirt that was hanging off her back around her chest.

He smiled down at her mockingly, forcing himself not to weaken. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, get dressed.’ If she didn’t he was in grave danger of falling down on top of her again, eyeing her flustered attempt to pull her shirt around the luscious curve of her breasts. Shame and guilt made him add, ‘You disgust me. I disgust myself.’

Amber bowed her head for a moment, the long curtain of her hair hiding her face from his glittering gaze. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut to hold back the tears. She disgusted him, he had said, and yet she was only what he had made her, and in that instant the new Amber was born.

Swiping back the mass of hair from her face, she rose to her feet. Ignoring Lucas’s looming presence, she picked up her briefs and leggings and, turning her back on him, took her time about putting them on. Then, straightening her shoulders, she turned to face him.

She lifted hard golden eyes to his. ‘What are you waiting for?’ she demanded bluntly. She was furiously angry at the undisguised contempt in his expression. But she refused to show it. ‘I thought a man of your high moral values would be long gone,’ she mocked him. She had learnt her lesson well. Never again in this life, she vowed, would she show any man how she really felt.

‘The floor show is over,’ she said facetiously. ‘If you’re hoping for a repeat performance, forget it—go back to Christina and I wish you both joy. Though I have a suspicion you will not find her quite the pure, malleable little bed partner and wife you imagine. After all, she already knows you have a mistress—’ she wanted to hurt him, dent his arrogant pride ‘—and she doesn’t care, which must tell you something.’

She had gone too far. He stepped towards her, his hand lifted as if to hit her. Involuntarily she flinched and stepped back.

‘No.’ His hand fell to his side, his fingers curling into a fist, his knuckles white with strain. ‘You are a lying little bitch.’ Amber knew he would never believe her or forgive her for her comments. ‘And you will never speak to my fiancée or mention her name again.’

Amber stared at him, her anger dying fast as his glance roamed contemptuously over her. There was sheer hatred in his eyes, and a clear message he would not touch her again if his life depended on it. But then she already knew that, she thought sadly. The last half-hour had been nothing more than animal attraction fuelled by rage on his part. He didn’t want her love, never had… The realisation was the end of everything for Amber. ‘Just go,’ she said wearily, brushing past him towards the door. Good manners decreed she see him out, she thought, and had to choke back hysterical laughter.

She opened the door and held it. Lucas reached out to grasp her arm, but she pulled away. ‘Goodbye, Lucas.’ The finality in her tone was unmistakable.

He went rigid. ‘Not so fast, you still have not given me the promise I asked for. I…I want your word you will not marry Spiro.’

She was sick at heart and halfway to being physically sick. ‘Okay.’

‘I mean it, Amber,’ Lucas said with deadly emphasis. ‘If you marry him your life will not be worth living, and you will find no solace in your work, that I promise.’ The taut line of his mouth gave way to a thin cruel smile as he paused. ‘I will personally make sure no one in the financial world will ever employ you again.’ He had to convince her for his own sanity to break all ties with Spiro. If the last hour had taught him anything it was that there was no way on God’s earth Lucas trusted himself to be in the company of Amber ever again. Not even a simple social occasion, or he was in danger of succumbing to the same sickening addiction to sex his mother had suffered from. The realisation of his own weakness shocked and horrified him, and he reacted with the same icy determination that made him a ruthlessly successful businessman. ‘I will totally destroy the career you love, and, believe me, I can and will do it.’

It was no idle threat, and the really scary part was that Amber had no doubt he could destroy her career with a few chosen words to her most influential clients. ‘Your threat is unnecessary. I have no intention of marrying Spiro.’

Amber’s golden gaze roamed over Lucas as though she were seeing him for the first time. He stood in the entrance door, tall and broad and as still as a statue carved in stone. She registered the soft wool sweater moulding the muscles of his broad chest, the hip-hugging jeans. Raising her gaze, she noted the thick black hair, the broad forehead, the perfectly chiselled features—he was incredibly handsome, but his face was hard, cold, the inner man hidden. One thumb casually hooked his leather jacket over a shoulder, but there was nothing casual about the man. Spiro had called him a shark and Amber finally realised it was true.

It was a revelation to Amber’s bruised heart. Lucas thought he loved Christina, but it was not what Amber considered love to be. It was no great consuming passion on Lucas’s part, he was incapable of the emotion. He had simply planned to fall in love with Christina with the same ruthless efficiency he planned a takeover bid. Christina simply met his criteria for a wife. Amber’s golden eyes met his, black and not a glimmer of human warmth in their depths, just a ruthless determination to succeed be it business or private, family or friend. He was incapable of differentiating between them. How had she ever thought she loved this cold, frighteningly austere man?

‘If you knew your nephew a little better, or at all,’ Amber said softly, one perfectly arched brow lifting eloquently, ‘you would have realised he was only winding you up when he said it. Now please go.’

With the door closed behind him, Amber silently added, If Lucas allowed anyone to know him, he might possibly develop into a halfway decent human being. But she had a suspicion he never had, and he was too old to change now.

Three weeks later in the same Monday morning paper Amber viewed the wedding photo of Lucas and Christina with a cynical smile. She read the gossip that went with it, the gist of it being that there were great celebrations at the high society wedding in Athens and the joining together of two great Greek families, not to mention the amalgamation of two international corporations to make one of the top leisure companies in the world.

Amber settled into her small house, bought a neat Ford car to drive into work, and as the days and weeks went past tried to put her disastrous love affair out of her mind. During the day she could block Lucas out of her thoughts with work. But at night she was haunted by memories of the sheer magic of his lovemaking—only it hadn’t been love, she had to keep reminding herself, and then the tears would fall. The only thing that kept Amber from a nervous breakdown over the next year was her growing relationship with her father. The news she had wanted to tell Lucas so eagerly, after lunching with Sir David Janson.

Two weeks after Lucas Karadines had left her, Amber had met Sir David again for lunch at a restaurant in Covent Garden. Much to Amber’s surprise his wife Mildred had accompanied him. It could have been embarrassing, but Mildred quickly explained she did not blame her husband or Amber’s mother. At the time Mildred had left her husband and two children and had lived with another man for over a year. Sir David had found solace with his secretary and Amber was the result.

Sir David quite happily acknowledged Amber as his daughter, saying a certain notorious Member of Parliament had recognised an illegitimate daughter without any ill effect, so why shouldn’t he? It was a one-day wonder in the papers, and his family—a married daughter and a much older son—were equally welcoming.

But Amber refused to take a job with her father’s company. Her feminine intuition told her she shouldn’t. Sir David’s son, Mark Janson, accepted her in the family, but as heir apparent to the business he was nowhere near so happy about having her in his father’s firm. Especially as Sir David told all and sundry Amber had obviously inherited her skill in the money markets from him.