Mediterranean Tycoons: Masterful & Married: Marriage At His Convenience / Aristides' Convenient Wife / The Billionaire's Blackmailed Bride. JACQUELINE BAIRD
with gold, shining beneath extravagantly long lashes, that animated her whole face.
‘Where to, miss?’ The cab stopped at her feet, and with a bright smile she slid into the back seat and gave the driver the address of her friends Tim and Spiro.
She alighted from the taxi outside the door of a small terraced house in Pimlico, and, after paying the fare, she glanced up at the white-painted house. It was hard to believe it was five years ago since she had moved into the house with Tim, a lifelong friend from the small Northumbrian village of Thropton where they’d both been born and brought up. Tim had comforted her when her mother had died when she was seventeen, and he had been in his first year at art college when Amber had been about to start at the London School of Economics. It had been Tim’s suggestion she move into the spare room where he stayed. The house actually belonged to Spiro Karadines, a Greek student who was studying English at a language school before going to work at the deluxe London hotel which his family owned to learn the business from the bottom up. He reckoned he needed to let the rooms to students to pay for the upkeep of the house, because his closest relative was an uncle, Lucas Karadines, who controlled his trust fund, and was as mean as sin.
Lucas would not be pleased if he knew Amber was visiting his nephew Spiro, but he had been a good friend to her whatever Lucas thought about him. She rang the bell and waited, a reminiscent smile on her face. It was exactly a year ago tonight, Spiro’s twenty-second birthday, when she had first set eyes on Lucas. He had arrived unannounced at the party, and, after a furious argument with Spiro, Lucas had calmed down and accepted a drink.
For Amber it had been love at first sight. She had taken one look at the tall, dark-haired man, incongruously dressed in a house full of motley-clad students in an immaculate grey business suit, and at least a decade older than anyone else, and her heart had turned over. She’d been unable to take her eyes off him; her fascinated gaze had followed him around the room.
Well over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, and long-legged, with thick black hair slightly longer than the present fashion, he’d been the most handsome man she had ever seen. Even when it had been obvious he’d been hopelessly out of place in a room where quite a few of the men had been openly gay, he’d exuded a powerful sexuality that had been totally, tauntingly masculine. When his dark eyes had finally rested on her, he’d smiled and she’d blushed scarlet, and when he had casually asked her to have dinner with him the next night she had agreed with alacrity.
Spiro had tried to put her off. He had told her his uncle was a predator of the first order, a shark, who would gobble up a little girl like her for breakfast. He was thirty-five, far too old for her. He liked his women smart and sophisticated—women who knew the score. Amber had replied she was smart, and Spiro had laughed.
‘In the brains department, yes, but you dress like—a blue stocking, I believe is your peculiar English term.’
Amber had thumped him, but had ignored Spiro’s warning and gone out to dinner with Lucas anyway.
It had been a magical evening. Lucas had asked her all about herself, and she’d responded by telling him her ambition to be a successful investment analyst. How she had just completed her first year at work and was delighted to have earned a huge bonus. She’d even told him she was the only child of an unmarried mother, but he had not been shocked. Finally, when Lucas had seen her to her door he had asked her if she would like to accompany Spiro and Tim to the family villa on the Karadineses’ private island of the same name in the Aegean Sea for Easter. Amber had again accepted his invitation. The kiss-on-the-cheek goodnight had been a bit of a let-down. But after questioning Spiro the next day about Lucas, she had blown a few thousand pounds of her first year’s bonus in buying a wardrobe full of designer clothes, visiting a beautician, and transforming herself into the sophisticated kind of woman she thought Lucas liked.
By the end of the island holiday, she had met the senior Mr Karadines, and Lucas had no longer been seeing her as a student friend of Spiro, but had been looking at her with blatant male sexual speculation in his dark eyes. On returning to London he had called her and wined and dined her half a dozen times, but the relationship had not developed past a goodnight kiss, admittedly each one more passionate and lingering than the last, but nothing more. Then he had gone to New York on business and she had thought he had forgotten her. Two weeks later he’d been back, and the next dinner date they’d shared she’d ended up in his hotel suite and they’d become lovers.
He was her first and only lover so she had no one to compare him with, but she did not need to. She knew she had found her soul mate. He only had to look at her and her stomach curled, and when he touched her he ignited a fire, a passion she had never known existed. She had a vivid mental image of his magnificent naked body looming over her, his powerful shoulders and hair-roughened chest, the long, tanned length of him, all straining muscle and sinew as he kissed and caressed her, and taught her the exquisite delight only two people who loved could share. Within a week, at Lucas’s insistence, she had moved into the loft apartment he had bought overlooking the Thames, and their relationship had gone from strength to strength. Just thinking about him made her heart pound, and brought a dreamy smile to her face.
‘What are you looking so happy about?’ Tim’s demand brought her out of her reverie.
She looked into the sparkling blue eyes of the blond-haired man holding open the door. ‘Happy memories,’ she said, and, walking past him, she brushed her lips against his smooth cheek. ‘Where is the birthday boy? I have a present for him.’
With the ease of long familiarity Amber strolled into the small living room. ‘Happy birthday, Spiro.’ She grinned at the slender dark-haired man elegantly reclining on a deep blue satin brocade sofa, and, gently dropping the parcel she was carrying onto his lap, she kicked off her shoes and sat down on the matching sofa opposite.
‘My, I am honoured. My esteemed uncle has actually allowed you to visit us. It must be over six months since we saw you,’ and, lifting an enquiring eyebrow to his partner, he added, ‘or is it more, Tim?’
‘Cut the sarcasm, Spiro. Amber is our friend, even if we do abhor her taste in men. Open your gift.’
‘Yes, Spiro, where Lucas is concerned we’ve agreed to differ. So open the present—I’ll have you know I went to great trouble to find just the right gift,’ Amber declared with a grin.
‘So-rry, Amber,’ he drawled dramatically. ‘You’ve caught me in a bad mood; I am finally beginning to feel my age.’
‘At twenty-three!’ she exclaimed. ‘Don’t make me laugh.’
‘You deserve to laugh, Amber. You deserve to be happy,’ Spiro suddenly said seriously.
‘I am happy.’ She grinned back. ‘Now open the parcel.’
Two minutes later Spiro was on his feet and pressing a swift kiss on Amber’s cheek. ‘I love it, Amber,’ he said, his gaze straying back to the small sketch of two young men, clad in loincloths, facing up as if to wrestle. ‘But it must have cost you a fortune—it is an original from the nineteenth century, isn’t it?’
‘Of course, I would not dare give you a fake,’ she replied, and all three laughed. Amber knew Spiro hated working for the family firm and his burning ambition was to set up his own art gallery.
Unfortunately she also knew Lucas controlled the purse strings, and Spiro could not inherit his late father’s share of the firm until he was twenty-five, or married. Spiro had a very generous monthly allowance, but he spent every penny.
The week after she’d moved in with Lucas, she had tried to put Spiro’s point of view to Lucas but he had withdrawn behind a cold, impenetrable mask and told her curtly to keep out of their family business, and also suggested she keep away from his nephew.
The ease with which he had turned into a hard, remote stranger as though her thoughts and opinions were nothing had scared her. Amber had wanted to argue, she’d tried, but Lucas had simply blanked her. Unfortunately it had put a strain on Amber’s friendship with her former flat-mates. She did keep in touch with Tim on a regular basis—they talked on the phone every week or so—but Spiro