Sharon Kendrick – His Contract Christmas Bride (страница 2)

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

DRAKON KONSTANTINOU LOOKED around him, unable to hide the disgust which swamped his body like a dank, dark tide. But hot on the heels of disgust came regret, and then guilt. Regret that he couldn’t have done something sooner and guilt that he couldn’t have prevented this terrible outcome.

But the trigger to these grisly events had been pulled a long time ago and he couldn’t control everything, no matter how much he had spent his whole life trying to do just that. Sometimes control just slipped beyond your grasp and there was nothing you could do about it. His brother had gone now and so had the woman he’d married—the sordid paraphernalia strewn around the room the last testimony to their degenerate lifestyle.

But life went on.

Life had to go on.

As if to confirm that indisputable fact, he heard an unfamiliar cry coming from an adjoining room, quickly followed by a voice and the sound of footsteps.

‘Drakon?’

He glanced up at his business partner’s face as she walked in from the adjoining room. Gingerly, she walked towards him, clearly uncomfortable as she carried her precious cargo—as if unsure just what to do next. Join the club, thought Drakon grimly.

‘Are you ready, Drakon?’ she asked.

He wanted to shake his head. To tell her he wasn’t prepared for this latest responsibility which had come slamming at him like a weighted curve ball. To protest that he’d done enough of shouldering other people’s burdens and their problems and he needed a break. But that was impossible. He could do this. He would do this. He just hadn’t quite worked out how.

He needed a woman, that was for sure, but a quick flick through his memory bank of females who would be willing to do pretty much anything he asked of them failed to come up with anyone remotely suitable.

And then, as if in answer to the turmoil of his thoughts, a face unexpectedly swam into his mind. A face with soft blue eyes the colour of the bluebells which had grown beneath the trees in those long-ago English springs, in the heady days before he’d discovered how much his father liked hookers.

Forcing his mind back to the present, he thought about the face again. Not a beautiful face but a kindly one. He felt a faint beat of remembered desire, but far stronger still was his sudden sense of purpose as he allowed his mind to linger on Lucy Phillips for the first time in many months and his eyes narrowed speculatively. Maybe fate was cleverer than he’d imagined. Maybe the answer had been staring him in the face all this time.

‘Neh,’ he said, his harsh Greek accent echoing around the marble-floored villa. ‘I’m ready.’

CHAPTER ONE

AT FIRST SHE didn’t recognise him, which was pretty amazing when she stopped to think about it. Except that Lucy had done her best not to think about it. Or him. She’d tried to blot Drakon Konstantinou from her mind, the way you did when you were on a diet and didn’t want to focus on cream cake, or chocolate, or toasted teacakes swimming with melted butter.

Because only an idiot would want to remember the man who had introduced them to pleasure then walked away so fast his feet had barely touched the ground. Or to recall her own participation in what could only ever have been an impossible fantasy.

But it was him. Lucy’s heart slammed against her ribcage as she opened the front door of her tiny cottage and peered out through the protective chain at the figure standing on the step, silhouetted darkly against the fiery orange of the winter sunset. It was definitely him. And the first thing she thought was how different he seemed from the man who had seduced her on the beautiful Greek island of Prasinisos, an island which he actually owned.

It wasn’t just that his features were ravaged and his shoulders hunched, as if a heavy weight were pressing down on their muscular breadth, but his black hair was longer, too. Instead of being neatly clipped to follow the shape of his head, ebony waves were kissing the collar of his dark overcoat and there was a dark layer of stubble at his angled jaw. His appearance hinted more at recent neglect rather than his usual pristine perfection and it was an astonishing transformation. Suddenly Drakon Konstantinou bore more resemblance to a rock singer who’d spent the night on the tiles, rather than a powerful oil baron and shipping magnate, with the world at his fingertips.

Unwanted feelings flooded through her body and started making her skin feel as raw as if someone had been attacking it with a cheese grater. She told herself she shouldn’t be so sensitive. Wasn’t that what her former colleagues at the hospital used to tease her about? But sensitivity wasn’t something you could just turn on and off, like a tap. Her memories of Drakon were mixed and...complex...and the overriding feeling she’d been left with when he’d walked away was that it would be better if she never saw him again. Better for her, certainly. Better to forget those three blissful days and nights which she suspected had ruined her for all other men. To try to get back into the groove of a life which had seemed very dull after her brief glimpse into his world.

But he was here now. Standing in front of her with all that dark, brooding power and she could hardly ignore him. She couldn’t really shut the door in his face and tell him she was busy—something which her scruffy jeans and swimming club sweatshirt suggested was untrue. Because that would run the risk of making her look vulnerable and that was something she wasn’t prepared to do. Okay, so he had taken her virginity. No, Lucy corrected herself sternly. She had given him her virginity—with an eagerness which had taken her completely by surprise. And him, if the look on his face had been anything to go by when he’d thrust deep into her body, while, outside, the inky waters of the Mediterranean had gleamed silver in the moonlight.

Just because they’d shared a passionate few days together and it had fizzled out like a spent firework didn’t mean they should now be enemies. Or was she deluded enough to have expected that the amazing sex they’d shared would end in some sort of relationship, when they came from completely different worlds?

And yet...

She cleared her throat, trying to quell the foolish hope which was spiralling up inside her, knowing how foolishly persistent hope could be. False hope could raise you up and then dash you down again, making the pain even more intense than it had been before. And she was done with pain for the time being. Hadn’t she been given more than her fair share of it during her twenty-eight years?

So she forced as wide a smile as she could manage and when she spoke, her breath rushed from her mouth like billowing smoke as it hit the cold winter air. ‘Drakon,’ she said. ‘This is...unexpected.’

He shrugged his powerful shoulders. ‘Maybe I should have rung first.’

He said it as if he didn’t really mean it. As if any woman should be falling over herself with gratitude that the famous Greek billionaire had deigned to pay her an unexpected call. She wasn’t really feeling it but Lucy attempted indignation. ‘Yes, you should. You were lucky I was in.’

Dark eyebrows were raised. ‘Oh?’

And despite everything, she found herself offering an explanation. As if she needed to prove herself to a man who hadn’t even cared enough about her to lift up the phone and check she was okay after their long weekend together. She began to talk. ‘Because this is a busy time of year in the catering industry. There are a lot of pre-holiday functions coming up and normally I would be working. In case you don’t remember I work for Caro’s Canapés and people eat more canapés at Christmas than at any other time of the year.’

‘Of course. Christmas.’ Drakon tensed as he said it, knowing he needed to choose his words with care—not a normal occurrence for him, since people always hung onto whatever he had to say with an eagerness which sometimes repulsed him. Like many powerful men he demanded servility while secretly despising it, but Lucy was different. She had always been different. Wasn’t that one of the reasons he was here today? There were countless women who would have bitten his hand off to accept what he was about to offer—but only Lucy would understand the truth.

Only Lucy would accept the limitations of what he was about to ask her.

But first he needed to gain entry into her mini-fortress of a cottage. He fixed his gaze on the chain which was still stretched tautly across the door and wondered why she hadn’t released it.

‘Can I come in?’ he questioned.

There was a pause. Not long enough to be insulting, but a pause nonetheless and he noted it with surprise and a faint flicker of irritation he knew to be unreasonable.

‘I suppose so,’ she said at last.

He watched her fiddle with the chain before pulling the door open and stepping back to let him in. He noted that she was keeping her distance but maybe he couldn’t blame her for that. He hadn’t behaved particularly well after that surprisingly erotic encounter which had taken place back in the summer and afterwards he’d cursed himself for allowing it to happen in the first place. He couldn’t understand why he’d behaved in a way which had been so uncharacteristic, because usually he chose his lovers as carefully as he chose his cars—and normally someone like Lucy Phillips wouldn’t have even made the cut.