Читать книгу Mediterranean Tycoons - JACQUELINE BAIRD, Jacqueline Baird - Страница 15

IT TOOK every bit of will power she possessed to stop herself running to him and throwing her arms around him. ‘Marcus.’ She licked her lips nervously. ‘I’m…’ Glad to see you, was what she had been going to say. What a copout! He was her lover, and she loved him, and courageously she decided to try honesty. ‘I’ve missed you.’ After all, he had returned early; that had to mean something.

He stopped when he was inches away from her. ‘Eloise,’ he husked. His dark eyes, blazing with desire, scanned her and, reaching out, he folded her in his arms and covered her mouth with his own.

His mouth was hot and searching with a hungry intensity that she met and matched. Eloise whispered his name as his tongue parted her lips. She arched against him and wound her arms around his neck, her hands stroking the silken hair at the nape, before sweeping lovingly across his powerful shoulders.

‘So long,’ Marcus groaned and pressed her body to his. ‘Too long.’ He could feel the rounded fullness of her breasts crushed against his chest. This was what he had come back for…

She was all woman; the scent of her, the soft curves and long shapely legs, promised and beguiled. He moulded her buttocks and lifted her, the seductive tilt of her pelvis fitting into the cradle of his hips, as he ground his rock-hard length against her in raw need.

‘Ooops, sorry.’

Marcus jerked his head back, his black gaze clashing with the blue of Ted Charlton. The man had obviously just strolled into the room from the direction of the bedroom. Marcus felt the breath leave his body as though he had been punched in the gut, and for a second a red haze of rage blinded him. He swore violently in Greek, and abruptly thrust Eloise away from him. ‘You bitch.’

Eloise stumbled back, her eyes widening in horror as she realised what it must look like. ‘No. It’s not like…’ She looked up at Marcus and ground to a halt. The change in him was devastating. Incredulous rage clenched his hard dark features, a muscle jerking uncontrollably in his taut cheek.

‘Then what is he doing here?’ Marcus’s eyes burnt into hers. ‘Or shall I guess?’ he drawled with cynical contempt. ‘A week without sex and you’re anyone’s.’ His gaze sliced back to Ted, apparently unable to believe what he was seeing.

Eloise was shaking, terrified by the cold deadly look in Marcus’s eyes; but beneath the terror she had a hysterical desire to laugh at his contemptuous conclusion she could not live without sex for more than a week. If only he knew…

She grabbed his arm. ‘No, Marcus, listen to me. I bumped into Ted in a department store; he was shopping for perfume for his girlfriend, and I challenged him to explain what he meant by telling you I had slept with him.’

‘I just bet you did. Persuaded him to lie for you?’

‘Damn it, no.’ Eloise cut him off. ‘Ted lied to you; he told me the truth over dinner.’ She tightened her grip on his jacket as he would have pulled away. ‘All about your celebration dinner and getting drunk and the girl in the bar. He told you he slept with me because he was jealous of you. Surely you can see that…?’ she prompted desperately.

‘All I see is a conniving lying bitch,’ he snarled, his black eyes blazing, ‘who would sell her body for the price of a dinner,’ and she knew he hadn’t believed a word she’d said.

The Marcus she loved didn’t exist, she realised with blinding clarity. He was a figment of a nineteen-year-old’s imagination. She didn’t recognise the man towering over her, dark and dangerous, but for Ted’s sake she tried once more to defuse the situation.

‘I shared dinner with Ted because he wanted to explain and apologise to me for lying about me to you, nothing more—and if you’re too pig-headed to see that, tough.’

Marcus took a step towards her and he lifted her hand off his sleeve, then he stopped. Her green eyes clashed with his; she saw the fury and contempt and thought, What was the point?

All that linked her and Marcus was sex. A shameful passion on her side she was helpless to control, and a virile man’s lust powered by revenge on his. Marcus did not love her, and never would, and that was the greatest pain of all. She took a deep shuddering breath and suddenly Ted was pushing Eloise to one side and facing Marcus.

‘If you want to lash out at anyone, Kouvaris, try me.’

Marcus’s hand shot out and he grabbed Ted by the collar and slammed him back against the wall. ‘Don’t tempt me,’ he snarled. He wanted to smash the man’s face to a pulp and he didn’t question the reason.

‘You’re a fool, Kouvaris,’ Ted grated in a high-pitched voice, nearly choking and clutching at Marcus’s hands.

‘I can beat the hell out of you, any day, in any way,’ Marcus raged, his violence controlled by a thread.

‘I know,’ Ted shot back. ‘That’s why I lied and said I’d slept with Eloise. I saw the way you looked at Eloise the first time I met you,’ he stated cynically. ‘And I saw the way the girl in the bar looked at you, when the night before she had been all over me. I was drunk, I was jealous and I lied. Rejected by a wife and a bar-girl, I was damned if I was going to make it easy for you to get Eloise. Lousy, I know, but that’s the truth.’

The two men stared at each other. Ted’s face red and Marcus’s grey beneath his tan, only his eyes blazing black with rage.

For a long moment Eloise simply stared at the scene before, all her energy concentrated on fighting the awful pain she was trying to hide. But as she watched the pain dissolved into a quite different emotion.

They were like two stags at bay, both ruthless powerful men, leaders of the pack. She recognised the angry acknowledgement between them—the old giving way to the young, but not without a fight—and a slow-burning anger ignited in her breast.

This was her home, her life. Pride stiffened her spine. She didn’t have to justify her actions to any man, certainly not the two egotistical male chauvinists before her, who were scrapping like two dogs over a bone. And in her living room!

‘Right, that’s it! Cut it out,’ she yelled. ‘And both of you can get out.’

Marcus shot her a look of outraged incredulity. She was ordering him out… He was the injured party in this debacle.

She met his gaze, her green eyes sparking fire, and she might have laughed if she hadn’t been so angry, Marcus looked so put out! ‘Let him go,’ she snapped.

Slowly, Marcus released his iron grip on Ted’s collar and some of the rage faded from his eyes. She was standing tall and proud, her luscious body bristling with tension. She was beautiful when she was angry. She was beautiful any time, and lost in passion beneath him she was paradise. Whether she and Ted were telling the truth or not, was he prepared to give up all that simmering sexuality? The tightening in his groin answered for him. Hell, no—not yet.

Marcus glanced back at Ted. ‘I think it’s time you left,’ he grated through his teeth. ‘Eloise is mine.’ His narrowed eyes fixed on Ted, his great body tense and towering threateningly over his rival. ‘You understand?’

‘Do you?’ Ted murmured dryly, shaking his head. He walked past Marcus. And, for sheer devilment, stopped and dropped a light kiss on Eloise’s cheek. ‘So long and good luck, and if you ever need me get in touch.’

‘You’re pushing your luck,’ Marcus growled, taking a step towards him.

‘No.’ Ted grinned back and, picking up the gift-wrapped bottle of perfume from the table where he had placed it earlier, he waved it in front of Marcus’s face. ‘I never trust to luck. I have a hot date tomorrow night, and I know how to treat a lady, unlike some.’ Laughing, he strolled out of the apartment.

Her legs trembling, Eloise sat down on the nearest sofa. ‘I think you’d better leave.’ Marcus had claimed her as his, as though she was an inanimate object, instead of an intelligent woman with thoughts and feelings. Well, he could go to hell, for all she cared. She had had enough.

‘No,’ Marcus bit out, crossing the space between them in one lithe stride. ‘I cancelled my plans for the next few days to see you, and I haven’t changed my mind.’

He looked down at Eloise. Maybe she was innocent where Ted was concerned. Ted had been very drunk in New York, and bitching at losing his wife and a ton of money. He vaguely remembered Ted introducing him to the blonde bimbo, and then she had been all over Marcus like a rash, so much so he had been quite rude to get rid of her.

As for the rest—his dark eyes roamed over Eloise. She was watching him, her green eyes cool, her luscious mouth held in a grim line. The red-gold tumble of her hair falling over her silky-smooth shoulders, so proud, so brave, and he was yelling at her like a loony.

If he was honest, he doubted she’d ever been involved with her mother’s scam. He’d seen the company books, and discovered the company had been set up nine months after Chloe’s death. Harry had told him the initial finance was from Eloise’s inheritance from her late mother’s estate. Eloise had bought the premises. Realistically, Eloise should be the major shareholder, and yet according to the records they were three equal partners, all drawing the same salary. If Eloise was a gold-digger, as he had thought, then she had a very funny way of going about it. Katy and Harry would not have a business if it were not for Eloise.

She was probably innocent of all he had accused her of, and incredibly generous to those she considered friends. Marcus suddenly realised he wanted to be in that company, to bask in Eloise’s approval. He’d known a lot of women in his life, some almost as beautiful and with the same luscious curves as Eloise—well, no, not quite as perfect, but some a lot more sexually aggressive in bed. But he also knew with absolute certainty none had come close to affecting him the way she did.

If he’d ever caught any other woman he was involved with alone with another man, he would have walked out the door and out of the woman’s life without a second thought. It scared the hell out of him that he couldn’t do that with Eloise.

Since the day he’d first met her as a young girl, she’d never really left his mind and, after the last weeks together, the happiest in all his thirty-four years, she had become an obsession. An obsession that had made him act out of character, and dash back early from the USA, his business incomplete, simply to see her. She was a fever in his blood, and he intended to keep her until the fever burnt out. A secret obsession Eloise need never be aware of, but he would have to watch her more carefully in the future. Innocent or not, there would be no more Teds… He would take her home tomorrow, he concluded arrogantly.

Marcus was still here and he still wanted her. Eloise did not know whether to laugh or cry. She could hear her heart thudding in shock, an erratic rhythm against her breastbone. Marcus must be able to hear it in the tense silence, but she dared not look at him; instead, she asked the one vital question.

‘So, now do you believe I never had an affair with Ted?’ Her eyes focused on the floor. It suddenly seemed imperative to her that Marcus showed some tiny bit of faith in her.

‘It’s not important. Forget it; I have.’

Her head came back at that, her eyes fixing on his in bitter resentment. She loved him but right at this moment she hated him. He didn’t trust her an inch and never would, but still she decided to give him one last chance. The final test, she told herself.

‘You saw the perfume Ted had bought. I told you we met by accident,’ she said through tight lips. ‘I told you Ted had lied and he confirmed it.’

One ebony brow arched in sardonic amusement. ‘So you did,’ he mused as he sank down on the sofa beside her. He was too close and her pulse leapt at his nearness.

‘Will anything convince you?’ she asked flatly. ‘Spelling it out in blood, maybe?’

Marcus ran a comprehensive eye over her and, reaching out, he let his long fingers tangle in her silky red hair. ‘If you want to convince me—’ his voice deepened ‘—feel free to try.’

She had her answer. Sex was all Marcus wanted from her. She tried to pull her head away but he wouldn’t let her escape. Her stormy eyes clashed with mocking black and his long fingers in her hair tightened their grip. ‘It should be fun,’ he teased.

‘That’s all I am to you, a sex game, you egotistical bastard,’ Eloise shot back, her fury edged with fear as his dark head descended. She tensed, eyes wide and glinting with defiance. She was damned if she was going to roll over again beneath his sensual onslaught. That was all she had done since they met in Paris and it had to stop, she told herself.

But her traitorous pulse raced into overdrive as Marcus covered her lips with his own in an explosive kiss. His dark head blocked out the light and his hand curved around her waist, hard and restraining, while he plundered her mouth at will.

Her pulse raced, and she gripped his arms in a last-ditch attempt to break free. But he wouldn’t let her go. He simply flattened her to the sofa. His hard, hot body sprawled on top of her, and his mouth continued to ravage her own, rough and then tender as one long hand swept down her body, and back to cup her breast.

She fought for control. ‘No,’ she moaned against his lips, struggling to breathe, denying the sensations he was forcing her to feel. Her nipples tautened into tight buds, and she trembled, unable to control her treacherous body’s reaction. But by a supreme effort of will she lashed out at him with fist and knee.

He reared back, and she caught a brief glimpse of his stunned expression as she flung herself over the arm of the sofa and landed on her feet.

‘What the hell was that for?’ Marcus sat back against the sofa, rubbing a hand across his cheek.

‘Figure it out for yourself.’ Her chest heaving, she stood a few feet away, staring down at him with angry green eyes. How it was possible one man could be so infinitely desirable, a great lover, and yet be completely lacking in the emotional department Eloise did not know.

Marcus’s eyes were dark and glinting with suppressed anger, and with an impatient gesture he got to his feet and moved towards her. ‘You’re mad because I chased Ted.’

Eloise swallowed unevenly. ‘No, not that you chased him,’ she said quietly. ‘But that you never believed him and, more importantly, me.’

His dark eyes pinned hers, shrewd and penetrating. ‘You want me to believe you; it bothers you that I don’t. Why is that, I wonder? Perhaps you care for me rather more than your sharp tongue will admit.’

Any minute his clever mind would work out how she really felt about him, and she couldn’t let that happen. ‘No, but I object to being treated like a whore, a woman who will sleep with a man one minute and quite happily sleep with another an hour later, and by your actions that’s how you see me.’

‘Ah, Eloise.’ Marcus’s expression was grim. He looked at her standing there, so young and looking so incredibly sexy and yet innocent at the same time, and it gave him a peculiar feeling in the region of his heart that was almost pain. ‘I only ever think of you as a clever, incredibly beautiful woman, and you shame us both by thinking otherwise,’ he said gently and, reaching out, he caught her shoulders and drew her gently towards him. ‘And if I gave you the wrong impression, I’m sorry.’ He moved one hand towards her cheek, and trailed gentle fingers down until he reached her chin.

A betraying pulse began to beat at the base of her throat and a nervous flutter stirred her stomach. ‘That’s a first.’ She tried for sarcasm, but the tremble in her voice gave her away as he tilted her chin and looked deep into her wide emerald eyes.

His eyes grew dark. He brushed her mouth gently. ‘And I do believe you about Ted.’

‘You do?’ She stared at him, and her heart skipped a beat. He believed her. Was she hearing right? A heady excitement bubbled through her.

‘Yes, I do.’ Tension snaked through Marcus’s large powerful body. His hand slipped from her shoulder to tighten around her slender waist, and he smoothed a few tendrils of glorious red hair from her brow. He had to keep it light, he wasn’t yet ready to confess he was blinded by jealousy.

‘After all, any woman with me as her lover wouldn’t look twice at Ted,’ he said with a husky chuckle, his slumberous dark eyes holding hers.

Eloise couldn’t help it; even when she was angry, he had the ability with a word, a look, a touch to make her change her mind. Her lips twitched. ‘You arrogant devil!’ She shook her head but he looked deep into her green eyes and saw the humour she couldn’t quite hide.

‘But you like me,’ he murmured teasingly, and suddenly Marcus, who had never considered if a woman liked him or not, found he was waiting, his heart pounding for her answer.

‘Yes, you could say that,’ she responded with a husky chuckle of her own, and then very gently, almost reverently, he bent his head and kissed her, and she kissed him back in helpless surrender.

He gently pulled her dress off her shoulders, his dark gaze flicking over her pouting breasts, raising her in his arms, slowly with the tip of his tongue he circled the areolae of one hard nipple.

‘Oh, yes,’ she sighed, immediately thrown back into a whirlpool of sensations. ‘Please.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Marcus parroted, his mouth enclosing the rigid tip and slowly licking her aching flesh, teasing with tongue and teeth until her back arched, and she was burning with the heady heat of passion and desperate need for continuance.

He slipped his arms beneath her, lifting her high so he could capture her mouth with his in a long drugging kiss as he carried her into the bedroom. He slid her down the long length of his body, letting her feel the pulsing ache of his arousal as he eased her out of her dress in one smooth movement.

He was wearing too many clothes. A low groan of frustration escaped her and she pushed her hands beneath his jacket up and around his back, dragging his head down to her, finding his mouth with her own.

Airborne again, Marcus laid her down on the bed, and in seconds joined her naked. A deep erotic sigh of pleasure escaped her, as the black hair of his chest rubbed against her turgid nipples.

Long fingers traced the length of her body, the indentation of her waist, the silky softness of her flat belly, and she trembled. She gripped his shoulders quivering with need. But he played with her mouth, licking and nibbling, then thrusting with his tongue, and all the time his long fingers slowly stroked the curve of her hip, the smooth skin of her inner thigh, but frustratingly refraining from touching her where she longed to be touched.

‘Marcus,’ she panted, her small hands sliding down to cover his, lost to everything but her own need.

‘Tell me what you want,’ Marcus rasped in a dark undertone, his breath fanning her cheek, his night-black eyes searching emerald. ‘Perhaps this?’

Her whole body jerked as his seeking fingers parted the velvet folds of flesh to touch the hot, moist, pulsing point of pleasure, sending convulsive shivers lancing through her.

Her hands roamed feverishly over his shoulders and skated down his back, around his broad chest to trace the silky black line down over his taut stomach, driven by a purely female primeval need to possess and be possessed, to claim him as her own. Her slender fingers found him, curving around the satin-coated steel length of him with shivering excitement, stroking him, made bold by her need.

She felt his great body shudder, and briefly she felt an incredible sense of power. But a heartbeat later she could not think at all as his mouth caught hers in a savagely hungry kiss. Involuntarily her fingers tightened around him.

With a guttural groan, Marcus raised his head. ‘You do it,’ he spelt out roughly, his night-black eyes clashing with her dazed green. Shuddering on the edge in a passion-induced dream, she did…

Eloise awoke early the next morning and yawned widely. She stretched languorously and was instantly aware of the warm male body beside her. Slowly turning her head, her green eyes widened on the sleeping figure of Marcus.

He lay on his back, one arm trailing across the top of her pillow, the other flung across the other side of the bed. The sheet was draped low across his hips, his broad hair-roughened chest rising slowly and evenly in sleep.

She glanced up at his face. With his eyes closed, and a day’s growth of beard darkening his firm jaw, he looked less than his perfect self, younger and somehow vulnerable.

Heat coloured her cheeks as she recalled last night, and her own part in it. She had actually touched him intimately with hands and mouth, something she had never imagined doing, and yet with Marcus she wanted to. It was unbelievable…

He was amazing. They had made love with a passion a hunger that lasted for hours until, sated and exhausted, she had fallen into a dreamless sleep. Her love-swollen lips curved in a smile of pure female satisfaction. Hardly surprising he was still asleep, she thought, her fascinated gaze sliding over his naked torso.

Even with her body aching in muscles she never knew she had, she couldn’t keep her eyes off his gorgeous bronzed body, and recalling how it felt to be thoroughly possessed by him made her shudder with remembered pleasure. Unable to resist, she reached out her hand and gently smoothed the soft black hair from the centre of his chest down to the narrow strip that disappeared beneath the sheet.

‘Hmm. That’s nice,’ Marcus murmured, moving and pressing a kiss on the top of her head.

‘I thought you were asleep.’ Eloise blushed scarlet and lay back, feeling almost happy. Marcus had said last night he believed her about Ted. A giant step forward—surely it couldn’t be long before he believed she was innocent of all he had accused her of?

‘I was, until you assaulted me.’ Marcus grinned and sat up, pulling her up with him. The dark eyes that met hers danced with wicked humour, and she smiled back.

‘Me?’ she questioned in mock indignation.

‘Yes,’ Marcus answered, and after kissing her thoroughly he rolled off the bed. ‘I’ll make breakfast, you start packing. We’re going to Greece.’

‘You’re kidding, of course,’ she exclaimed, her eyes skimming over his lithe body and wondering how a naked man could still manage to portray such stunning arrogance.

‘I couldn’t possibly leave London at the moment,’ she said easily, thinking of all the new designs she was involved with for their expanding business, and Katy’s light workload because of her preoccupation with Benjamin. Which was only as it should be, Eloise thought, her mind wandering into the realms of fantasy, imagining what a baby with Marcus as a father would look like.

The thought brought her up cold, all the colour leaching from her face… She looked at him as he turned back to face her, and watched the humour vanish, and his face grow cool and distant.

His dark knowing eyes rested on her pale face. ‘You can and you will, Eloise. You have far too many distractions in London.’ He knew he sounded harsh, but he couldn’t help it; she had looked at him, white-faced and horrified, and it gave him a peculiar feeling in the area of his heart again.

How could he have gone from wanting, needing and believing her to this hard-faced tyrant, Eloise wondered, within minutes of waking up? A night of passion meant nothing to Marcus, and his complete lack of emotion simply confirmed what she already knew.

But she lived here, Eloise reminded herself firmly. She worked here. He had to be crazy. She couldn’t drop everything and swan off to Greece at his say-so…

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I would be ridiculous if I left you here alone again. On Rykos, when I am not around, my family and friends will take care of you.’ Marcus knew from experience how difficult it was to have a sex life on the tiny island without everyone knowing about it, and he was a man… For Eloise, branded as his woman, it would be impossible. No man would go near her, and that suited him just fine.

‘I do not need taking care of,’ she fumed. Where did he get off ordering her around? Well, she wasn’t putting up with it any more and she was damn well going to tell him so, but before she could open her mouth again he’d left.

She listened to him running the shower in the bathroom, and expelled a shuddering sigh. What was the point of arguing with him? she decided with bitter resentment. After the night they’d spent together, she’d had high hopes Marcus might begin to trust her, might care about her. But he’d made it brutally clear he didn’t. Her mind in turmoil—Greece apart—it had hit her when thinking about babies. Marcus was always meticulous about using protection, but last night he had forgotten…

Half an hour later, she joined him in the kitchen. As she walked towards him, clad in well-washed denim jeans and a baggy grey tee-shirt, she was aware she looked a mess, and didn’t give a damn. She wasn’t going anywhere and that was final.

‘You’re wearing that to travel?’ he asked flatly. ‘Hardly flattering, and jeans are far too hot for August in Greece.’

‘I’m not going to Greece. I have neither the time nor the inclination,’ she told him coldly, pulling out a chair and sitting opposite him at the tiny kitchen table, surprised he had actually prepared coffee, toast and a selection of conserves. He wasn’t totally hopeless in the kitchen, she thought dryly, suddenly feeling hungry. She filled a cup with coffee, took a sip, and reached for a slice of toast, before bravely raising cool green eyes to his. ‘Some other time, perhaps.’

Marcus’s gaze narrowed and swept over her tensely held body perched on the chair. She was nowhere near as confident as she tried to appear. ‘Nice try, Eloise,’ he drawled mockingly. ‘But it isn’t a request, it’s an order.’

‘Tough. I have to work, and I have a commitment to Katy.’

‘Need I remind you, we have a deal? Your first commitment is to me and, as for your work, you can design as easily in Greece as in London.’

His deliberate mention of their deal hit her like a cruel blow, and she despised herself for harbouring a lingering shred of hope that he would grow to love her. When was she going to learn? Pride alone made her squeeze back the tears that threatened and, lifting her head, she said, ‘But I don’t want to,’ bravely defying him.

Hooded dark eyes surveyed her. ‘You don’t have a choice.’

‘So this is the end of the truce,’ she snapped back.

Marcus cast her a cynical smile. ‘Yes, if that’s how you want to see it. But why pretend, Eloise? We both know I only have to touch you to make you change your mind.’

Stunned at his arrogance, her appetite deserted her, and the toast dropped from her fingers. Her gaze skated helplessly over him. He was wearing the same clothes he had arrived in last night. He should have looked a mess. But the grey designer suit fitted him like a glove, the jacket straining over broad muscular shoulders; even the blue shirt still looked perfect. How did he do it? Or was it her?

God help her! But she was made humiliatingly aware that he only spoke the truth, and it shamed her to the depths of her soul. She felt so vulnerable. What was he doing to her? A vivid mental image of last night heated her flesh, the images so real, she could almost feel the touch of his hot, hard body against her skin.

The doorbell rang and she leapt to her feet, almost stumbling on her headlong flight through the small hall to open the door. He was insidiously taking over her life; she did not seem to have the strength to deny him, and it terrified her.

Katy walked in. ‘Your paper.’ She dropped the paper in the direction of the hall table, lifting her head and sniffing the air. ‘Is that coffee I smell?’ and she headed for the kitchen.

Eloise closed the door and bent down to pick the paper off the floor. It had fallen open, and her eyes caught a name in the centre page. Rick Pritchard. The blood drained from her face, her hand shook and, closing her eyes, she paused for a moment. Then with slow deliberation she rose and folded the paper and placed it on the table.

The name was a timely reminder. It was way past time she got herself back under control. She had allowed Marcus to break through the shield she kept over her emotions, the only person to do so in four years. She must rebuild her defence against him. But how easy that was going to be with Marcus calling all the shots? A deep, shuddering sigh escaped her and, straightening her shoulders, she took a few long steadying breaths, practising the exercises she had been taught. She could hear Katy’s voice and the deep rich tones of Marcus’s and then laughter.

If there were any repercussions from the unprotected sex of last night, Eloise knew she would have to leave Marcus. Which meant she would have to sell the house and break up the partnership. The sound of Katy’s laughter would be a thing of the past, as would their friendship, and all because of Marcus Kouvaris. But at this particular point in time she did not care. She had more important things to worry about, like staying alive… Suddenly Greece seemed a very desirable location.

By the time Eloise entered the kitchen, Marcus had talked Katy into believing it was a marvellous idea for Eloise to go to Greece. Eloise put up a token argument, not wanting Marcus to realise she had changed her mind—not because of him or Katy, but because Eloise wanted to be anywhere but England…

A dark skinned maid escorted her up a palatial marble staircase and along a wide corridor, and into a bedroom. ‘The master’s,’ she said with a giggle.

Eloise looked at the girl blankly. ‘Thank you, that will be all,’ she murmured, surprisingly not in the least embarrassed, and watched as the young maid backed out of the door and shut it behind her.

Her beautiful face impassive she glanced around. Large, it was sumptuously elegant with a huge bed on a raised dais as the main feature. She strolled across the mosaic floor and pushed open a door to a sybaritic bathroom, in black and gold, with a large circular spa bath, double shower, and marble and mirrored walls. It fitted the man, she thought idly, and re-entered the bedroom and crossed to the window that took the place of one wall. She slid it open and stepped out onto a long balcony. The air was hot and heavily scented after the coolness of the bedroom, and the view so spectacular she caught her breath.

A paved patio with a dolphin-shaped swimming pool as its centre led to a garden that was a riot of colour in the early evening sun, and gently sloped down to a low wall, and a sandy beach and the clear blue sea beyond. She glanced to one side and saw an orchard, a mass of orange and lemon trees, and in the distance she could see the small cluster of luxury villas. None so luxurious as this, she was sure, and one the scene of the drama five years ago that had led to the tragedy her life had become now, she thought bitterly. She looked in the opposite direction and her heart missed a beat. She recognised the cliff and the precarious path down to the hidden bay.

Abruptly, she turned back to the bedroom. Marcus had brought her to his home on Rykos… A house, he had told her on the flight across, he had designed and had built in the last couple of years. What he had not told her was it was in close proximity to the cliff and beach where he and Eloise had once shared a picnic.

Eloise had kept the memory of that one perfect day in her heart and head as a kind of talisman. In times of great pain and stress, she used to conjure up the bay in her mind, to blank the horror out. It was ironic that, after reading that hated name, Rick Pritchard, in the paper this morning and, rigid with shock, she needed her talisman view, and there it was before her very eyes—and it did not work any more.

The innocent nineteen-year-old had finally gone forever. Marcus had made sure of that; and, the truly sad part was, he had not even noticed…