ALLEGRA KALLAS WASN’T expecting a fatted calf or a rolled-out red carpet and a brass band. She was used to coming home to Santorini with little or no fanfare. What she expected was her father’s usual indifference. His polite but feigned interest in her work in London as a family lawyer and his pained expression when she informed him that, yes, currently she was still single. A situation for a Greek father of a daughter aged thirty-one that was akin to having a noxious disease for which there was no known cure.
Which made her wonder why there was a bottle of champagne waiting on a bed of ice in an ice-bucket with the Kallas coat of arms engraved on it and a silver tray with three crystal glasses standing nearby, and why he was gushing about how wonderful it was to have her home.
Wonderful?
Nothing about Allegra was wonderful to her father. Nothing. What was wonderful to him now was his young wife Elena—only two years older than Allegra—and their new baby Nico, who apparently weren’t expected back from Athens until later that evening as Elena was visiting her parents. And since little Nico’s christening wasn’t until tomorrow…
Who was the third glass for?
Allegra slipped her tote bag off her shoulder and let it drop to the leather sofa next to her, the fine hairs on the back of her neck standing up. ‘What’s going on?’
Her father smiled. Admittedly it didn’t go all the way to his eyes, but then the smiles he turned her way rarely did. He had a habit of grimacing instead of smiling at her. As though he was suffering some sort of gastric upset. ‘Can’t a father be pleased to see his own flesh and blood?’
When had he ever been pleased to see her? And when had she ever felt like a valued member of the family? But she didn’t want to stir up old hurts. Not this weekend. She was home for the christening and then she would fly back to her life in London first thing Monday morning. A weekend was all she was staying. She found it too suffocating, staying any longer than that, and even that was a stretch. She glanced at the champagne flutes on the tray. ‘So who’s the third glass for? Is someone joining us?’
Her father’s expression never faltered but Allegra couldn’t help feeling he was uneasy about something. His manner was odd. It wasn’t just his overly effusive greeting but the way he kept checking his watch and fidgeting with the cuff of his sleeve, as if it was too tight against his wrist. ‘As a matter of fact, yes. He’ll be here any moment.’
Something inside Allegra’s heart kicked against her chest wall like a small cloven hoof. ‘He?’
Her father’s mouth lost its smile and a frown brought his heavy salt-and-pepper eyebrows into an intimidating bridge. ‘I hope you’re not going to be difficult. Draco Papandreou is—’
‘Draco is coming here?’ Allegra’s heart kicked again but this time the hoof was wearing steel caps. ‘But why?’
‘Elena and I have asked him to be Nico’s godfather.’
Allegra double blinked. She had thought it a huge compliment when her father and his wife had asked her to be their little son’s godmother. She’d assumed it was Elena’s idea, not her father’s. But she hadn’t realised Draco was to be Nico’s godfather. She’d thought one of her father’s older friends would have been granted the honour. She hadn’t realised he considered Draco a close friend these days, only a business associate—or rival, which seemed more appropriate. The Papandreou and Kallas names represented two powerful corporations that had once been close associates, but over the years the increasingly competitive market had caused some fault lines in the relationship.
But Allegra had her own issues with Draco. Issues that meant any meeting with him would be fraught with amusement on his part and mortification on hers. Every time she saw him she was reminded of her clumsy attempt as a gauche teenager to attract his attention by flirting with and simpering over him and, even more embarrassingly, the humiliating way in which he had put a stop to it. ‘Why on earth did you ask him?’
Her father released a rough-sounding sigh and reached for the shot of ouzo he’d poured earlier. He tipped his head back, swallowed the drink and then placed the glass down with an ominous thud. ‘The business is in a bad way. The economic crisis in Greece has hit me hard. Harder than I expected—much harder. I stand to lose everything if I don’t accept a generous bailout merger from him.’
‘Draco Papandreou is…is helping you?’ Every time Allegra said his name a sensation scuttled down her spine like a small sticky-footed creature. She hadn’t seen Draco since she’d run into him at a popular London nightspot six months ago where she’d been meeting a date—a date who had stood her up. A fact Draco had showed great mirth in witnessing. Grr.
She loathed the man for being so…so right about everything. It seemed every time she made one of her stupid mistakes he was there to witness it. After that embarrassing flirtation on her part when she’d been sixteen, she had quickly transferred her attention to another young man in her circle. Draco had warned her about the boy and what had she done? She’d ignored his warning and got her heart broken. Well, not broken, exactly, but certainly her ego had got knocked around a bit.
Then, when she’d been eighteen, Draco had found her helping herself to the notoriously potent punch at one of her father’s business parties she was supposed to have been helping him host and had lectured her about drinking too much. Another lecture she’d wilfully ignored…and, yes, he’d been there to see her coughing up her lungs a short time later. Double grr. Admittedly, he’d been rather handy with a cool face cloth and had gently held her hair back from her face…
But it hadn’t stopped her hating him.
Not one little bit.
Even in all the years since, when she ran into him he had an annoying habit of treating her as if she was still that gauche teenager and not a grown woman with a high-flying legal career in London.
‘Draco has offered me a deal,’ her father said. ‘A business merger that will solve all my financial problems.’
Allegra gave a disdainful snort. ‘It sounds too good to be true, which usually means it is. What does he want out of it?’
Her father didn’t meet her gaze and turned slightly to pour another drink instead. She knew her dad well enough to know he only drank to excess in one of two states: relaxed or stressed. Stressed seemed to be the ticket this time. ‘He has some conditions attached,’ he said. ‘But I have no choice but to accept. I have to think of my new family—Nico and Elena don’t deserve to be punished for my misfortune. I’ve done all I can to hold off the creditors, but it’s at crisis point. Draco is my only lifeline…or at least the only one I’m prepared to take.’
His new family. Those words hurt her more than she wanted to admit. When had she ever felt part of his old family? She’d been a ‘spare part’ child. A rescue plan, not a person. Her older brother Dion had contracted leukaemia as a toddler, and back in those days parents had been encouraged to have another child in case the new baby was a bone-marrow match. Needless to say, Allegra hadn’t come up with the goods. She had failed on both counts. Not a match. Not male. Dion had died before Allegra was two years old. She didn’t even remember him. All she remembered was she had been brought up by a series of nannies because her mother had been stricken with unrelenting grief. A grief that had morphed into depression so crippling, Allegra had been sent to boarding school to ‘give her mother a break’.
Her mother had ‘accidentally’ taken an overdose of sleeping tablets the day before Allegra was to have come home for the summer the year she turned twelve. No one had said the word ‘suicide’ but she had always believed her mother had intended to end her life that day. The hardest part for Allegra was the sad realisation she hadn’t been enough for her mother. Her father hadn’t even bothered to hide his disappointment in having a female heir instead of the son he had worshipped. Hardly a day had gone by during her childhood and adolescence when Allegra hadn’t felt the sting of that disappointment.
But now her father had moved on with a new wife and a new baby.
Allegra had never belonged and now even less so.
‘Draco will tell you about our agreement himself,’ her father said. ‘Ah, here he is now.’
Allegra whipped around to see Draco’s tall figure enter the room. Her eyes met his onyx gaze and a strange sensation spurted and then pooled deep and low in her belly. Every time she looked at him she had exactly the same reaction. Her senses jumped to attention. Her pulse raced. Her heart flip-flopped. Her breath hitched as though it were attached to strings and someone was jerking them. Hard.
He was wearing casual clothes: sandstone-coloured chinos and a white shirt rolled past his strong, tanned forearms, which took nothing away from his aura of commanding authority. When Draco Papandreou walked into a room every head turned. Every female heart fluttered…as hers was doing right now, as though there were manic moths trapped in her heart valves. He oozed sex appeal from every cell of his six-foot-three frame. She could feel it calling out to her feminine hormones like an alpha wolf calling a mate. No other man had ever made her more aware of her body than him. Her body seemed to have a mind of its own when he came anywhere near.
A wicked mind.
A mind that conjured up images of him naked and his long, hair-roughened legs entwined with hers. The only way she could disguise the way he made her feel was to hide behind a screen of sniping sarcasm. He thought her a shrew, but so what? Better that than let him think she was secretly lusting after him. That the embarrassing crush she had foolishly acted on when she’d been sixteen had completely and utterly disappeared. That her dreams didn’t feature him in various erotic poses doing all sorts of X-rated things with her. She would rather be hanged and quartered and her body parts posted to the four corners of the earth than admit the only sex she’d had in the last year or so had been by herself, with him as her fantasy.
That—God help her—the last time she’d had sex with a partner it had been Draco she had thought of the whole time.
‘Draco, how nice of you to gate crash a private family celebration. No hot date tonight with one of your bottle-blonde bimbos?’
His mouth lifted at one corner in his signature half-cynical, half-amused smile. ‘You’re my date, agape mou. Hasn’t your father told you?’
Allegra gave him a look that would have snap-frozen a gas flame. ‘Dream on, Papandreou.’
His dark eyes glinted as if the thought of her saying no to him secretly turned him on. That was the trouble with having had a crush on a man since you’d been a pimple-spotted teenager. They never let you forget it. ‘I have a proposal to put to you,’ he said. ‘Would you like your father present or shall I do it in private?’
‘It’s immaterial to me where you do it because nothing you propose to me would ever in a thousand, million, squillion years evoke the word “yes” from me,’ Allegra said.
‘Er… I think I can hear one of the servants calling me,’ her father said and left the room with such haste it looked as though he were running from an explosion. But then, whenever she and Draco were left alone together the prospect of an explosion was a very real possibility.
Draco’s gaze held hers in a tether that made the base of her spine shiver. ‘Alone at last.’
Allegra broke the eye contact, walked over to the drinks tray and casually poured a glass of champagne. Or at least she hoped it looked casual. She wasn’t a big drinker but right now she wanted to suck on that bottle of champagne until it was empty. Then she wanted to throw the bottle at the nearest wall. Then the glasses, one by one, until they shattered into thousands of shards. Then every stick of furniture in the room.
Smash. Bash. Crash.
Why was he here? Why was he helping her father? What could it possibly have to do with her? The questions tumbled through her brain like the champagne tumbling into her glass. Her father’s business was hanging in the balance? How could that be? It was one of the most well-established businesses in Greece, and had operated for several generations. Other business people looked up to him, in awe of all he had achieved. Her father had always brandished his wealth like it was a ten-thousand-strong flock of golden-egg-laying geese. How had it come to this?
Allegra turned and gave Draco a sugar-sweet smile. ‘‘Can I offer you a drink? Weed killer? Liquid nitrogen? Cyanide?’
He gave a deep rumble of a laugh that did strange things to her insides. Things they had no business doing. Not for him. ‘Under the circumstances, champagne would be perfect.’
She poured a glass and handed it to him, annoyed her hand wasn’t quite steady. He took the glass but in doing so his fingers brushed against hers. It was like being touched with a live current. The shock of it sent a jolt through her entire body, making her hormones sit up and beg for more. She snatched her hand back and then wished she hadn’t. He had an uncanny ability to read her body language like a cryptographer reading code.
Everything about him unsettled her. Made her feel things she didn’t want to feel. But no matter how hard she fought it she couldn’t take her eyes off him. It was as though magnets were attached to her eyeballs and he was true north. She had seen a lot of beautiful men over the years but no one came close to having Draco’s pulse-tripping features. Ink-black hair with just enough curl to make her want to run her fingers through it and straighten out those sexy kinks. A mouth that was not just sensual but sinfully sculpted. A mouth that made her think of long, drugging kisses. The mere thought of his hard male mouth crushing hers was enough to make her get all hot and bothered and breathless.
She had felt that mouth on hers. Once. Had felt it and had responded to it, only to have him push her away with an ego-crushing comment about how a silly little girl like her could never satisfy a man like him. For years that cruel put-down had savaged her self-esteem. It had ruined her sexual confidence—not that she’d had much to begin with. Damn him for being so darned attractive. Why couldn’t she stop gawping at him as if she were still that stupid, star-struck kid with a crush?
He had shaved but the potent male hormones surging around his body would be enough to defeat any decent razorblade. Dark stubble was peppered along his lean jaw and around his mouth.
Dear God, she had to stop looking at his mouth.
She picked up her glass of champagne but before she could take a sip he held his glass within reach of hers. ‘To us.’
Allegra pulled her glass back before it could touch his, sloshing the champagne down the front of her blouse. Of course, she was wearing silk. The saturating liquid made her right breast stand out even though it was inside a lace bra. Why was she so ridiculously clumsy around him? It was mortifying. She brushed off the excess liquid with her hand but it only made the dampness worse, making the upper curve of her breast cling to the fabric as though she were in a wet T-shirt competition.
Draco handed her a clean white handkerchief. Of course he would be carrying a clean white handkerchief. ‘Would you like me to—?’
Allegra snatched the square of cloth off him before he could finish the sentence. No way was she letting him touch her breast even if it was through four folds of cotton. She couldn’t guarantee a suit of armour and Kevlar vest would keep her from responding to his touch. She dabbed at her wet breast and never had such a task seemed so erotic. Even her breast thought so. It was tingling and her nipple peaking…but maybe that was because Draco’s dark obsidian gaze was following her every movement over it. She screwed the handkerchief into a tight ball and tossed it to the coffee table. ‘I’ll have it laundered and returned to you.’
‘Keep it as a souvenir.’
‘The only souvenir I want from you is the word “goodbye”.’
His eyes held hers again in a spine-shuddering, resolve-melting lock. ‘The only way that’s going to happen is if I pull out of this business merger.’
‘I don’t care about the merger.’
‘Maybe not, but you should. It rests solely on your compliance with the terms of the deal.’
Terms? What terms?
Allegra disguised her unease by shaking her loose hair back behind her shoulders in a gesture of indifference. But she was far from indifferent. Something about his unwavering gaze made her feel he was toying with her, like a cat with a mouse it had cleverly cornered. What on earth could he want her compliance over?
Since that kiss years before, there had always been a climate of tension between them. A tug of war of wills. A power struggle that crackled the air when they were in the same room together. He was her enemy and she didn’t care who knew it. Hating him made it easier for her to forget how much she’d wanted him. Hating him kept her safe from her own traitorous hormones that were annoyingly, persistently, immune to every other man but him. ‘My father’s business affairs are of no concern to me. I am completely independent of him and have been for the last ten or so years.’
‘Independent financially, maybe, but you’re his only daughter. His only child. He paid for your stellar education. He gave you everything money could buy. Don’t you care he’s about to lose everything without my help?’ His deeply carved frown added to the grave delivery of his words.
Allegra wished she didn’t care. But the trouble was, she did. It was her Achilles’ heel—her weak spot, the raw, vulnerable part of her personality—the need to feel loved and valued by her only living parent. She had sought it all her life to no avail. In spite of her father’s shortcomings, inside she was still that small child looking for his approval. Pathetic, but true. ‘I fail to see what any of this has to do with me. I simply don’t care what state my father’s business is in.’ She knew she sounded cold and unfeeling but why should she care what Draco thought of her?
He studied her for a long moment. ‘I don’t believe you. You do care. Which is why you’ll agree to marry me to keep the business afloat.’
Shock hit her in the chest like a punch. Marry him? Allegra widened her eyes. Not saucer-wide. Not dinner-dish-wide. Platter-dish-wide. Surely he hadn’t just said that? The M word? Him and her? Married? To each other? She blinked and then laughed but even to her ears it sounded on the verge of hysterical. ‘If you think for one second I would marry anyone, let alone you, then you are even more of an egomaniac than I thought.’
Draco’s gaze continued to hold hers in an intractable lock that was a tantalising tickle to her girly bits. ‘You will do it, Allegra, or see your father’s business die a slow and painful death. It’s on life support as it is. I’ve been drip-feeding your father money for the last year. He hasn’t got the funds to repay me even if I waive the interest. No one will lend him anything now, not after the way things have panned out in our economy. I came up with this solution instead. This way everyone wins…in particular, you.’
Allegra couldn’t believe his arrogance. Did he really think she would agree to such a preposterous deal? She hated him with a passion. She couldn’t think of a single person she would less like to marry. Well, she could, given her line of work, but that wasn’t the point. He was a playboy. A fast-living Lothario who churned through women like a speed-reader churned through cheap paperbacks. Marriage to Draco would be emotional suicide, even if she didn’t hate him. ‘You’re unbelievable. What planet are you on that you would think I would see this as a win for me? Marriage isn’t a win for any woman. It’s a one-way ticket to serfdom, that’s what it is, and I won’t have a bar of it.’
‘You’ve been hanging around divorce courts way too long,’ he said. ‘Plenty of marriages work well for both parties. It could work for us. We have a lot in common.’
‘The only thing we have in common is we both breathe oxygen,’ Allegra said. ‘I dislike everything about you. Even if I were on the hunt for a husband, I would never consider someone like you. You’re the sort of man who would expect his pipe and slippers brought to him when he gets home. You don’t want a wife, you want a servant.’
His half-smile was back, making his impossibly black eyes twinkle. ‘I love you too, glykia mou.’
Allegra thinned her gaze to hairpin slits. ‘Read my lips. I am not marrying you. Not to save my father’s business. Not for any reason. No. No. No. No.’
Draco took a leisurely sip of his champagne and put the glass down on the coffee table with exacting precision. ‘Of course, you’ll have to commute between London and my home for work, but you can use my private jet—that is, if I’m not using it myself.’
Allegra clenched her hands into fists. ‘Are you listening to me? I said I am not marrying you.’
He sat on the sofa and leaned back with his hands behind his head, one ankle crossed over the other with indolent grace. ‘You haven’t got a choice. If you don’t marry me then your father will blame you for the collapse of his company. It’s a good company but it’s been badly run of late. That business manager your father appointed a couple of years ago when he had that health scare didn’t do him any favours. I can undo that damage and turn the business around so it’s profitable again. Your father will stay on the board and have a share of the profits I guarantee will be more than he has received in decades.’
Allegra bit down on her lip. It had been a worrying time when her father had had a cancer scare. She had flown back and forth as much as she could to help him through his bout of chemo and radiation. Not that he’d shown any great appreciation, of course. But to marry Draco to save her father from financial ruin? It was as if she had suddenly stepped into the pages of a Regency novel.
But her father needed her. Really needed her. There could have been worse men than Draco to offer for her, she had to admit. The sort of men she faced down in court. Mean men. Dangerous men. Men who had no respect for women and who used their children as weapons and pay-backs. Men who stalked, bullied, threatened and even killed to get their own way.
Draco might be arrogant but he wasn’t mean. Dangerous? Well, maybe to her senses, yes. Her senses went into a dazzled and dizzying frenzy when he came close. Which was a very good reason why she couldn’t marry him.
Wouldn’t marry him.
‘Why me?’ Allegra said. ‘Why would you possibly want me for a wife when you can have any woman you want?’
His eyes did a lazy sweep of her from head to foot and back again, sending a frisson through every cell in her body. ‘I want you.’
Those sexily drawled words should not have made her feminine core do a happy dance. She wasn’t vain but knew she was considered attractive in a classical sort of way. She had her mother’s English peaches-and-cream complexion, her dark blue eyes and slim build, but she had her father’s jet-black hair and drive to achieve.
But Draco dated super-models, starlets and nubile nymphets. Why would he want to shackle himself to a hard-nosed career woman like her, especially when they fought at every chance they got?
Over the years she had done her level best to hide her attraction to him. The Embarrassing Incident when she’d been sixteen was filed away in her mind in the drawer marked ‘Do Not Open’. These days she sneered instead of simpered. She derided instead of drooled. She flayed instead of flirted.
Falling in love with Draco Papandreou would be asking for the sort of trouble she helped other women extricate themselves from on a daily basis. Love did weird things to women. They got blindsided, hoodwinked, charmed into looking at their men through rosy love-tinted glasses that failed to show up their faults until it was too late.
Allegra wasn’t going to be one of those women—a victim of some man’s power game, leaving her as vulnerable as a rain-soaked kitten. ‘Listen, I appreciate the compliment, such as it is, but I’m not in the marriage market. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to—’
‘The offer is for today and today only. After that I start asking for my money back. With interest.’
She sent her tongue over her lips but they felt as dry as the cardboard cover on one of her expert reports. The economic crisis in Greece was serious. So serious that many well-established companies had hit the wall like over-ripe peaches. She might have some issues with her father but not to the point where she wanted to see him ruined and publicly humiliated. Not now he had a wife and young baby to provide for. Allegra liked Elena. She hadn’t expected to, with Elena only being two years older than her, but she did. It some ways Elena reminded her of herself—trying too hard to please everyone in an effort to be loved and accepted.
But if she married Draco to save her father from financial destruction she would be exposing herself to the sort of sensual danger she could well do without. For years she’d kept her distance from him. After that mortifying encounter when she was sixteen, it was her only way of protecting herself. But how would she keep her distance if she were married to him? ‘This marriage you’re…erm…proposing…’ It was lowering to find her voice sounding so scratchy. ‘What do you get out of it?’
His eyes shone with a devilish gleam that made her inner thighs tingle as if he had stroked her intimately. No one else could do that to her. Turn her on with a look. Make her so hungry for him she had trouble keeping her hands off him. She would like nothing more than to run her hands all over that strong male body to see if it was as deliciously hard and virile as it looked. When had she not burned with lust for him? Ever since she’d been a teenager with newly awakened hormones he’d been her go-to fantasy guy. No one else came close. He had all but ruined her for anyone else and he hadn’t so much as touched her, other than incidentally, since that kiss. ‘I get a wife who’s hot for me. What more could a man want?’
Allegra kept her expression under tight control. ‘If you want a trophy wife then why not select one from your crowd of sexy little sycophants?’
‘I want a wife with a brain between her ears.’
‘Any woman with half a brain would steer clear of a man like you.’
Her insult only made his smile tilt further, as if he was enjoying himself at her expense. ‘And if you were to provide me with an heir…’
‘A…what?’ Allegra’s voice came out like a mouse’s squeak. ‘You’re expecting me to have…?’
‘Now that I think about it…’ He rose from the sofa with leonine agility. ‘An heir and a spare might be a good thing, ne?’
Was he teasing or was he serious? It was so hard to tell behind the sardonic screen of his gaze. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something? I don’t want children. I have a career I’m not prepared to sacrifice for a family.’
‘Lots of women say that but in most cases it’s not true. They say it as an insurance policy in case no one asks them to marry them.’
Allegra’s mouth dropped open so far, she thought her toenails would be bruised. ‘Are you for real? What jungle vine did you just swing down from? Women are not breeding machines. Nor are we waiting around with bated breath for some man to stick a ring on our finger and carry us off to be their domestic slave. We have just as much ambition and drive as men, sometimes even more so.’
‘I’m all for your drive.’ His eyes did that glinting thing again. ‘That’s another thing we have in common, ne?’
The less she thought about his sex drive, the better. No one oozed it more potently than him. He was the poster boy for pick-up sex. He moved from relationship to relationship faster than a driver late for an important appointment changed lanes. What had brought about this sudden desire to play family man? He was only thirty-four—three years older than her. Or was it his way of twisting her arm? The arm that was attached to her hormone-charged body that strangely—since that night six months ago in London—kept reminding her every time she had a period she was over thirty and childless. ‘I don’t know where you got the idea I would agree to this farcical plan. Did my father suggest it?’
‘No, it was entirely my idea.’
His idea? Allegra frowned. ‘But you don’t even like me.’
He came and stood in front of her, his superior height making her feel like a child’s rocking horse standing up to a Clydesdale stallion. He didn’t touch her but she could feel the magnetic pull of his body making every cell in hers gravitate towards him. She raised her eyes to his, momentarily losing herself in those bottomless pools of black with their fringe of thick lashes.
Why did he have to be so wickedly attractive? Why did her hormones jump up and down in ecstatic glee when he was close? Her gaze went to his mouth, drinking in the way his lips were both firm yet sensually supple, the lower one generous, the top one slimmer, but not enough to be considered cruel. It was a mouth always on the verge of a smile, as if he found life amusing rather than sad. Had she ever seen a more kissable male mouth?
‘We could be good together, agape mou. Very good.’
Allegra suppressed the shiver his provocative words evoked. His voice was deep and mellifluous and his Greek accent—so much stronger than the faint trace of it in her voice—never failed to make her skin prickle in delight.
He always spoke English to her because she had let her Greek slip after living so long in England. She understood it more than she could speak it but she could hardly describe herself as fluent. She had always spoken English to her Yorkshire-born mother and she suspected her neglect of her father’s language was a subconscious way to punish him for not being the father she longed for. ‘Look, Draco, this has to stop. All this talk of a marriage between us is pointless. I’m not—’
He took one of her hands and enfolded it in the cage of his. His fingers were warm and dry, the tensile strength in them making something in her stomach drop like a book falling from a shelf. Make that a dozen legal textbooks. Who knew her hand was so sensitive? It was as if every nerve was on the outside of her skin, tingling, making her aware of every pore of his. ‘Why are you so frightened of getting close to me?’
Allegra had to swallow a couple of times to find her voice. ‘I—I’m not frightened of you.’ I’m frightened of me. Of how you make me feel.
His thumb began a slow stroke of the fleshy base of hers. It was as light as a sable brush on a priceless canvas but it triggered an explosion of sensations that ricocheted through her body. Her heart picked up its pace as though she’d been given a shot of adrenalin with a crack chaser. Her brain was scrambled by his closeness, her resolve to keep her distance gone missing without leave.
His eyes searched hers for a long, pulsing moment. It was as if he was committing every one of her features to memory: the shape of her eyes, her nose, her cheeks, her mouth and the tiny beauty spot just above the right side of her top lip.
Allegra licked her lips, then realised what a blatant giveaway that was—the primary signal of attraction. It was as if her body was acting of its own accord. Her will, her determination to resist him, was overridden by a primal need to touch him, to have him touch her. To have him kiss her until she forgot about everything but how those firm, male lips felt on hers.
What are you doing?
The alarm bell of her conscience shattered the moment and she pushed against his chest and stepped back to create some distance between them. ‘Don’t even think about it, buddy.’
His mouth tilted in a knowing smile. ‘I’m a patient man. The longer I wait, the better the satisfaction.’
Allegra had a feeling there would be a heck of a lot of satisfaction going on if she were to submit to his passion. The sort of satisfaction that had mostly eluded her in her previous encounters. She wasn’t good at sex, or at least not with a partner. She could get things working fairly well on her own, but with a partner she found it too distracting to orgasm. Dead embarrassing, but at least she had been able to fudge her way through it. So far.
But she suspected Draco wouldn’t be fooled.
Not for a minute.
Allegra refilled her glass for something to do with her hands. She was conscious of him watching her every move, his dark gaze resting on her like a caress. Her skin tingled, her pulse raced, her insides coiled tight with need. A need awakened by him. ‘I think it’s best if we forget we had this conversation. I don’t want anything to spoil Nico’s christening tomorrow.’
‘What will spoil it will be you refusing to marry me to save your father’s skin,’ Draco said. ‘You haven’t got a choice, Allegra. He needs you like he’s never needed you before.’
It was far more tempting than she wanted to admit. Not just because of how it would make her father finally appreciate her, but because she couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like to be Draco’s wife. Sharing his life with him, sharing his luxury villa on his own private island. Sharing his body. Being pleasured by him, experiencing the full gamut of human passion. It was a dream come true for the gauche teenager she had once been.
However, she wasn’t that girl any more.
But then a thought dropped into her head. Had her father and Elena only asked her to be godmother to Nico because of Draco and his offer? Would they have asked her without the merger and the marriage condition? Wasn’t she good enough on her own to be Nico’s godmother? Why did she have to partner with her enemy? A man she loathed with the same passion she desired him.
Allegra twirled her glass and placed it back down on the tray next to the champagne bottle. ‘Here’s a hypothetical question for you. If I were to marry you then how long would you expect the marriage to last?’
‘For as long as I want it to.’
And how long would that be? Allegra turned to look at the view from the window to give herself more time to think. The sunlight was so bright it was almost violent. The intense blue of the Aegean Sea, and the equally vivid blue domes in contrast to the stark white of the houses, never failed to snatch her breath. It was picture-postcard perfect, especially from her father’s luxury villa in Oia, where the best sunsets in the world were occurred.
It was home and yet it wasn’t.
She’d always felt like she had a foot in both countries and it added to her sense of not really belonging anywhere.
If she married Draco to save her father from financial disgrace, where would that leave her when it was time to call an end to their marriage? Few marriages ended with a mutual agreement to part. There was nearly always one party who wasn’t happy about the break-up. Would that be her? And—if he wasn’t joking about the heir he said he wanted—there was no way she would have a child under such circumstances, with the knowledge that the marriage had no guarantee, no promise of full and lasting commitment.
Allegra turned back to look at Draco. ‘Still speaking hypothetically here. What about my career? Or do you expect me to give that up?’
‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘But there will have to be compromises occasionally. I have business interests in London, as you know, but most of my time is spent in Greece. I think the fact you have your own career will enhance our marriage rather than complicate it.’
‘And you would expect me to be with you most of the time?’ Allegra said it as though it was the most unreasonable request in the world. As though she’d be committing to daily root-canal treatment.
His expression flickered with amusement. ‘Isn’t that what husbands and wives do?’
Allegra sent him a speaking look. ‘Ones that are in love with each other, maybe. But that hardly applies in our case.’
One side of his smile went a little higher. ‘You’ve been in love with me since you were a teenager. Go on—admit it. That’s why you haven’t got married yet or dated with any regularity. You can’t find anyone that does it for you like I do it for you.’
Allegra affected a laugh. ‘Seriously? That’s what you think?’ What signals had she been giving off to make him think she was still that clumsy teenage girl? She wasn’t that infatuated fool any more. She was all grown up and she hated him. Hated. Hated. Hated him.
His eyes gleamed like wet paint. ‘When was the last time you slept with a man?’
She folded her arms across her body and pursed her lips like she was a schoolmistress staring down an impertinent child. ‘I’m not going to give you details of my sex life. It’s none of your damn business who I sleep with.’
‘It will be my business once we’re married. I expect you to be faithful.’
Allegra unfolded her arms and planted her hands on her hips instead. ‘And what about you? Will you be faithful or will I have to turn a blind eye to your little dalliances like my mother did for my father?’
Something hardened around his mouth, making it appear flatter, less mobile. ‘I am not your father, Allegra. I take the institution of marriage very seriously.’
‘So seriously you’re prepared to marry a woman you don’t love, for a short period of time, just so you can acquire a flagging business?’ She made a scoffing noise. ‘Don’t make me laugh. I know why you want to marry me, Draco. You want a trophy wife. A wife who knows which knife and fork to use. A wife you can take anywhere without worrying she might embarrass you. Then, when you’ve got me to pop out an heir, you’ll get bored, send me on my way and keep the kid. I’m not doing it. No way. Find some other puppet.’
She pushed past him to leave the room but he snagged her wrist on her way past, bringing her around to face him. Her skin burned where his fingers gripped her, but not a painful burn, more of a sizzling, tingling burn that sent heat rushing through her body and pooling in her core. He had rarely touched her since that kiss other than by accident. The contact of his flesh on hers was like being zapped with a lightning bolt. It made every nerve beneath her skin pirouette. His thumb found her thrumming pulse and soothed it with slow, measured strokes while his eyes held hers prisoner.
‘I was only teasing about the heir,’ he told her. ‘But think carefully, Allegra. Yes, I am in the market for a suitable wife, and you fit the bill. But this is also your chance to get your father to finally notice you. You won’t just be helping him, but Elena and little Nico, by providing them with security. If the business goes under, it will take them down with it.’
He had found another weak spot. Elena and Nico. They were the innocents in this situation and their future would be compromised if she didn’t do something. Allegra could offer her father a loan but the sort of money Draco was talking about was in the millions. Many millions. She was wealthy, but not wealthy enough to float a multi-million-euro corporation. She let out a rattling breath and looked down at their joined hands. How could she turn her back on her father’s financial plight when she was the only person who could do something? If her father went down, Elena and darling little Nico would be collateral damage. She couldn’t stand back and let that happen. Not when she could help it. She would have to marry Draco. Gulp. ‘It seems I don’t have any choice.’
Draco brought her chin up so her gaze meshed with his. ‘You won’t regret it. I can guarantee it.’
You think? Allegra brushed his hand away from her chin and took a step backwards. ‘I’m not agreeing to this for any other reason than to save my family. Are you absolutely clear on that?’
His eyes shone with a triumphant gleam that made the backs of her knees tingle. ‘But of course.’
She disguised a swallow, trying not to notice the way his eyes kept glancing at her mouth. ‘When are you thinking of…doing it? I mean, getting married?’
‘I have already taken the liberty to make all the arrangements. We’ll be married next weekend. I would have done it this one but I didn’t want to steal little Nico’s limelight.’
Allegra’s eyes bulged in alarm. ‘So soon?’
‘It is a little rushed, but it will be a relatively simple affair. Just a handful of close friends and family.’
‘But what if I want the whole shebang?’
‘Do you?’
She blew out another breath and averted her gaze. ‘No…’
‘You’d be surprised at what can be done in a short period of time when you have money. If you want a white wedding, then that’s what you will have.’
Allegra had never been the sort of girl to hanker after the fairy-tale wedding. She had rarely even thought of getting married. Her career had always been her top priority. She normally avoided bridal shops and didn’t drool at jewellers’ windows. But ever since she’d been a bridesmaid at a friend’s wedding a couple of months ago she had started to think about what it would be like to be a bride. To be loved by someone so much they would promise to spend the rest of their life with her. It was indeed a fairy tale, one she saw turn to ashes and heartache every day of her working life.
‘We’ll be married on my island retreat,’ Draco said. ‘It will be easier to keep the press away.’
Allegra had never been to Draco’s private retreat but she had seen photos. He had a villa in Oia, an apartment in Athens and other homes on Kefalonia and Mykonos. But his secluded retreat on his private island had the most amazing gardens and an infinity pool that was perched on the edge of a vertiginous cliff. It would make a stunning wedding location.
And a perfect spot for a honeymoon.
Do not even think about the honeymoon.
‘Aren’t you worried what the press will make of us?’ Allegra asked.
He gave a loose-shouldered shrug. ‘Not particularly. I’ve grown accustomed to them speculating on my private life. Most of the time they make stuff up.’
Not everything was fiction. She had seen enough photos of him surrounded by beautiful women to know he wasn’t living the life of a Tibetan monk. Far from it. He was considered one of Greece’s most eligible bachelors. Women were elbowing each other out of the way to score a date with him. What would everyone say when they heard she was to be his wife? A single-minded career woman like her, marrying a fast-living playboy like him.
It was laughable.
‘You’ll have to take a week off work, of course,’ he said. ‘We’ll take a short honeymoon on my yacht.’
Her heart flapped like a goldfish trapped in the neck of a funnel. ‘Hang on a minute—why do we need to have a honeymoon?’
There was a spark of something at the back of his gaze. Something dark and sensual and spine-tinglingly wicked. ‘If you need me to spell that out for you, agape mou, then you’ve been living an even more cloistered life than I thought.’
Allegra crossed her arms, holding them tightly against her stomach. A honeymoon? On his yacht? His yacht was no cheap little fishing dingy, but it could never be large enough for her to feel safe. Safe from her own wicked, traitorous desires. She would need a cruise liner or an aircraft carrier for that and even that would be no guarantee. ‘Look, I’m prepared to marry you for the sake of my father, but I’m not going to sleep with you. It will be an on-paper marriage. A marriage in name only.’
Draco came back to where she was standing but she had moved back against the wall, which gave her nowhere to escape. And with her hands crossed over her body she didn’t have room to unwind them to push him away. She breathed in the scent of him—lime and cedar with a hint of something that was unique to him. It unfurled around her nostrils, making them flare to take more of him in. She felt drunk on him. Dazzled by the pheromones that swirled and heated and mated with hers.
He slipped a hand to the side of her head, his fingers splaying through her hair until every root on her scalp shivered in delight. His eyes had that dark, twinkling spark of amusement that did so much damage to her resolve. Lethal damage. Irreparable damage. ‘And how long do you think an on-paper marriage between us would last, hmm?’ His voice was a deep burr that grazed the length of her spine like a caress from one of his work-callused hands. ‘I want you and I intend to have you.’
Allegra couldn’t stop staring at his mouth—the way his lips shaped around every word; the way his stubble made her want to press her mouth to his skin to feel the sexy rasp of his regrowth. Kiss me. Kiss me. Kiss me. The chant was pounding an echo in her blood. She didn’t want to be the one to make the first move. Not like she had done all those years ago, when she’d thrown herself at him only to be brutally rejected. She wasn’t that girl any more. Making the first move would give him too much power. She could resist him. She could. She could. She could.
As if he could read her mind, he brought a fingertip to her mouth and traced a slow outline of her lips, setting off a round of miniature fireworks under her skin. ‘Such a beautiful mouth. But I’m not sure if you’re going to kiss me back or bite me.’
She inched up her chin. ‘Try it and see.’
His smile was lazy and lopsided and sent her belly into free fall. But then he tapped her lower lip with his index finger and stepped back. ‘Maybe some other time.’