The Greek's Billion-Dollar Baby. Clare Connelly
She reached out, feeling the sheets. They were cold. Her stomach grumbled and she pushed to sitting, smothering a yawn with the back of her hand. When had they finally fallen asleep? She couldn’t remember.
A smile played about her lips as she stood, grabbing the sheet and wrapping it toga style around her, padding through the penthouse.
‘Leonidas?’ She frowned, looking around. The glass doors to the balcony were open. She moved towards it, the view spectacular, momentarily robbing her of breath for a wholly new reason.
He wasn’t out there.
She frowned, turning on her heel and heading back inside. It was then that she saw it.
A note.
And there was so much to comprehend in that one instant that she struggled to make sense of any of it.
First of all the letterhead. It was no standard issue hotel notepad. It bore the insignia of the hotel, but the embossed lettering at the bottom spelled ‘Leonidas Stathakis.’
Leonidas Stathakis? Her heart began to race faster as she comprehended this. She didn’t know much about the Stathakis brothers—she wasn’t really au fait with people of their milieu, but no one could fail to have at least heard of the Stathakis brothers. To know that they were two of the richest men in the world. There were other facts, too, swirling just beneath the surface. Snatches she’d heard or read but not paid attention to because it had all seemed so far away. Crimes? The mob? Murder? Was that them? Or someone else?
She swallowed, running her finger over the embossing, closing her eyes and picturing Leonidas as he’d been the night before. As he’d stood so close to her and their eyes had seemed to pierce one another’s souls.
Her pulse gushed and she blinked her green eyes open, scanning the paper more thoroughly this time, expecting to see a few lines explaining that he’d gone to get breakfast, or for a workout—those muscles didn’t just grow themselves—or something along those lines.
What she wasn’t expecting was the formality and finality of what she read.
Hannah
It shouldn’t have happened. Please forget it did. The penthouse is yours for as long as you’d like it.
Leonidas
She read it and reread it at least a dozen times, her fingers shaking as she reached for the coffee machine and jabbed the button. Outrage warred with anger.
It shouldn’t have happened.
Because she hadn’t been what he’d expected? Because she hadn’t been any good?
Oh, God.
Was it possible that the desire she’d felt had been one-sided? Angus had been engaged to her and been able to easily abstain from sex, yet he’d been fooling around behind her back.
Had she been a let-down?
Hurt flooded inside her, disbelief echoing in her heart.
She’d wanted to come to Chrysá Vráchia almost her whole life, but suddenly, she couldn’t wait to leave.
A WEEK AFTER leaving the island, Leonidas awoke in a cold sweat. He stared around the hotel room, his heart hammering in his chest.
Hannah.
He’d been dreaming of Hannah, the woman he’d met on Chrysá Vráchia. He’d been dreaming of her, of making love to her. His body was rock hard and he groaned, falling back onto the pillows, closing his eyes and forcing himself to breathe slowly, to calm down. To remember his wife.
And nausea skidded through him, because he knew he would never forget Amy. But for those few moments, when he’d lost himself inside Hannah, when he’d pierced her innocence, and possessed her so completely, he had felt…
He had felt like himself.
For the first time in many years he had felt like a man who was free of this curse, this guilt, this permanent ache.
He had lost himself in Hannah and, just for a moment, he had lost his grief.
He swore under his breath, and pushed the sheet back, his heart unable to be calmed. Leonidas walked to the plush kitchen of his Hong Kong penthouse, pressing a button on the coffee machine.
He watched it brew, an answering presentiment of disaster growing inside him.
‘Do you need me to talk to him?’
Leonidas focussed on sounding normal. But in the month since leaving Chrysá Vráchia, he’d had a growing tension, balling in his gut, and nothing he did seemed to relieve it. It was guilt, he knew. Guilt at having betrayed his vows to Amy. At having broken the vow he made himself, that Amy would be the last woman he was intimate with.
The limousine slid through Rome, lights on either side.
‘Yeah, sure, that’s even better,’ Thanos responded with sarcasm. Leonidas’s younger brother shook his head. ‘Kosta Carinedes will take one look at you and see Dad. Sorry.’
Leonidas winced—the physical similarities between himself and Dion were not news to him. ‘So how are you going to convince him to sell?’
‘He wants to sell,’ Thanos murmured, tilting his head as the car slowed at a corner and paused near a group of beautiful women wearing skimpy shorts and singlet tops. ‘He just doesn’t want to sell to us.’
‘Because of Dion?’
‘Because of our name,’ Thanos conceded with a nod. ‘And because I am, quote, “a sex-mad bachelor”.’
At this, Leonidas laughed, despite the bad mood that had been following him for weeks. ‘He’s got you bang to rights there.’
Thanos grinned. ‘Hey, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being sex-mad. We can’t all live the life of a saint like you.’
Leonidas’s expression shifted as though he’d been punched in the gut. He was far more sinner than saint, but he had no intention of sharing his slip-up with his brother.
‘Offer him more money,’ Leonidas suggested, cutting to the crux of the matter.
‘It’s not about money. This is his grandparents’ legacy. They built the company out of “love”,’ he said the word with sardonic derision, ‘and he won’t sell it to someone who’s constantly in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.’
Leonidas shrugged. ‘Then let it go.’
‘You’re kidding, right? I told you what this means to me? And who else is interested in buying it?’
Leonidas regarded his brother thoughtfully. ‘Yes. Luca Monato. And I know you two hate each other. But this is just a company. Let him have it, buy its competition and drive him into the ground. Far more satisfying.’
‘It might come to that. But I’m not done yet.’
‘What else can you do? I hate to point out the obvious, but Kosta’s right. You’re a man whore, Thanos.’
Thanos laughed. ‘And proud. You could take a couple of pages out of my book. In fact, why don’t you? I’ve got a heap of women you’d like. Why don’t you call one of them? Take her for dinner and then back to your place…’
Leonidas turned away from his brother, looking out of the window of the limousine as Rome passed in a beautiful, dusk-filled blur. He thought of Hannah, his body tightening, his chest feeling as if it were filling with acid.