Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  One brave hotel employer dared to try and stop him. ‘She’s my wife,’ he announced as if that meant everything. ‘You don’t come between a man and his wife!’

  And he stepped into the lift.

  The last image Lizzy carried with her as the doors closed on them was an unrestricted view across the great hall and into the dining room where everyone was on their feet and staring at them.

  ‘I hope you enjoyed causing that awful spectacle!’ she choked out. ‘Now put me down!’

  ‘Not in this life,’ Luc responded. ‘You refuse to listen. You are an unforgiving harridan. You don’t care what you make me feel. You love me but you don’t love me!’

  It was a distinction that made Lizzy stop fighting him so she could try to work it out. The moment she relaxed in his arms he let her feet slither to the ground. The doors to the lift parted as if he’d planned it. And maybe he had, Lizzy wouldn’t put it beyond his capabilities. He dragged her out by the clamp of fingers he had around her wrist. The slide of a plastic key and she found herself standing in the most palatial suite of rooms she had ever seen.

  The door closed, she heard the lock hit home. At last he let go of her and walked away. He was stiff with anger, she could see it pulsing from every part of him. He hooked up a bottle of something, poured some into a glass and downed it in one swallow, then finally turned.

  ‘What else do you want from me?’ he demanded, spreading his arms open wide. ‘I let Bianca go. I married you as soon as I could arrange it. I put my pride and my reputation on the line for you. How many hints do you need before you stop being blind and see why I did these things?’

  Lizzy tried her best to make her dizzy head think clearly, but all it was doing was soaking up his tense posture, the streaks of dark colour across his cheeks. He was angry—yes. He was defensive—yes. He was tall and dark and unbelievably more gorgeous to her than ever because he was finally opening up—for her.

  Her fingers made a fluttering gesture, then came together across her front beneath the point where her heart was rattling around in her chest like an overexcited pup.

  ‘Ti amo?’ she dared to ease out.

  He tensed—all of him tensed, then he gave a curt nod of his head. ‘From the first time our eyes met in London,’ he admitted. ‘It came as a severe shock to me. I thought it was because you reminded me so much of nonna, but the feeling did not go away and I wanted it to. My life was already mapped out. I was betrothed to Bianca—’

  ‘And sleeping with Bianca,’ Lizzy put in huskily.

  ‘What do you want me to say?’he demanded heavily. ‘I’m a thirty-four-year-old man and I did not embrace celibacy while getting to this age.’

  ‘I didn’t think you did,’ Lizzy said stiffly. ‘I just didn’t—’

  She stopped, taking a bite out of her bottom lip because she knew what she had been about to say sounded stupid and immature and totally unfair—but she just hadn’t thought about Bianca with him in that way. She didn’t even know why it should matter to her so much yet it did.

  ‘With Bianca it was just—’

  ‘Don’t,’ she choked, not needing to hear him compare the two of them as if they were—

  ‘No,’ he sighed, hunching his shoulders and turning away from her, his stance weary and bleak.

  Then—’No,’ he said again and spun back to face her again. His chin jutted and his expression turned fierce. ‘I am going to say it,’ he insisted, ‘because I think it needs to be said. Bianca and I were engaged to be married so of course we were intimate. This is the twenty-first century, cara, an age in which most women expect their relationships to be intimate! But the intimacy stopped when I met you,’ he admitted. ‘A fact which probably contributed greatly to Bianca taking other lovers.’

  He saw Lizzy’s shocked expression and smiled cynically. ‘Our decision to marry had nothing to do with love, cara.

  Bianca was telling the truth when she called it forming a dynasty. She had the right name and she was beautiful.’

  He paused, the words catching in his throat. ‘But I made a big mistake,’ he continued then. ‘In my arrogance, when I didn’t bother to look for the right woman because I believed I did not need to with Bianca there in the wings of my life, I did her no favours, or myself, by accepting what fate had handed to me on a plate. Then I met you and I was way too attracted to you to be fair to anyone. The way you just had to keep looking at me fascinated me. I watched for you doing it and arrogantly took it as my due without bothering to analyse why I liked to feel your eyes on me.’

  His eyes blazed a golden trail across her pale, still face.

  ‘Your hair fascinates me,’ he murmured softly. ‘I love its colour and the way it does its own thing and you don’t care. I love your long, womanly shape and your soft, womanly curves and I miss you when you are not curled against me in our bed. I miss being able to fall asleep with my hand filled by the warm softness of your breast, or waking up with your mouth a brush away from my mouth and your hand claiming possession of me. You want to hear more?’ he flicked out tautly.

  Like a mouse mesmerised by the big jungle cat, Lizzy nodded.

  ‘Okay,’ he said and took in a deep breath. ‘I hate the way I took your innocence. It plagues me constantly that I was so tough on you. I never want to see a look on your face like the one you wore when Bianca told you she was pregnant by me. And I despise that cheap excuse for a dress you are wearing because I can’t see your beautiful figure through it and I want to see it. I want to lust after you even if you never let me touch you again. And I adore—’ his voice softened and grew silky ‘—the way you’re standing there lapping all of this up because you believe you deserve it when you know retribution is going to come at you for being such a greedy—’ he took a step forward ‘—selfish, unforgiving woman with sex on her mind.’

  ‘We don’t have sex. We make love,’ Lizzy corrected.

  ‘Ah.’ At last the strain relaxed from his face. ‘So you admit you get the difference.’

  Reaching up, he took hold of a fistful of her hair and tugged. Her head went back, exposing the length of her creamy throat to him and locking her eyes with his.

  ‘Green,’ he said. ‘You’re dying to rip my clothes off.’

  ‘I want your baby,’ she whispered.

  And his golden eyes turned black, the studding power of the lion in him surging to the fore on a hot adrenalin rush as he dealt wih the rear zip to her dress.

  The cheap black fabric fell away whilst her fingers were busy with the buttons on his shirt. He lost the jacket. Warm dark skin as taut as leather and clouded by dark virile hair brushed the backs of her fingers as she worked. She felt muscles flinch and flex as she worked.

  And he didn’t break contact with her eyes as she did it. He did not claim her waiting mouth. He just built on the pulsing sexual tension because—that was how they liked it, singing along wires pulled taut through the rushing heat of their blood.

  His shirt was cast aside, her dress along with it. She un-clipped her bra and discarded that too—and still they made no physical contact other than his fist in her hair and her hands now dealing with the clip and zip of his trousers.

  But her lips had started to tremble and his eyes had gone from black to flames of burning gold. ‘Take the shoes off yourself,’ she tremored.

  As he obediently heeled the first shoe off, one of her hands slid around his neck and the other slid inside his loosened trousers. Stretching up on tiptoe, Lizzy placed her lips against his ear.

  ‘Ti amo,’ she whispered and felt his response run like Martha’s rum through his body. It raced along the place her hand was holding, and raged like fire across his face.

  ‘Ti amo,’ she whispered again across the burning temptation of his lips.

  Then her hands squeezed—both of them, the one holding the velvet-smooth power of erection captive and the one clasped around his neck so she could bring his mouth into full, hungry contact with her own hungry mouth.

  �
��I hope you appreciate you are going to pay for that,’ he muttered tensely when she pressed her teeth into his warm bottom lip.

  ‘just something else I owe you,’ Lizzy sighed mock tragically. ‘Five and a half million kisses, a few De Santis cubs and one sexy bite of your lip.’

  ‘You will never pay me back in this lifetime,’ he declared confidently as he picked her up in his arms and walked through to the bedroom and tumbled her down on some really decadent-looking four-poster bed that knocked spots off the one in the Caribbean because of its heavy drapes in a dark red fabric and the matching cover that made her skin look so pearly white and clashed so alarmingly with her corkscrew hair.

  But Luc loved what he was seeing—Lizzy saw it blazing like golden fire in his eyes.

  ‘I give you leave to try,’ he invited as he stripped the rest of his clothes off, then dealt with what else she had left on with the cool economy of a man who knew how much he was exciting the woman he was about to throw himself down on top of.

  ‘Do I get to start soon?’ she quizzed innocently. ‘Si.’ He made the long snaking stretch with his body until he completely covered her. ‘I will keep an account.’

  ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

  THE GREEK TYCOON’S

  UNWILLING WIFE

  KATE WALKER

  About the Author

  KATE WALKER was born in Nottinghamshire, but as she grew up in Yorkshire she has always felt that her roots are there. She met her husband at university and she originally worked as a children’s librarian, but after the birth of her son she returned to her old childhood love of writing. When she’s not working, she divides her time between her family, their three cats and her interests of embroidery, antiques, film and theatre and, of course, reading. You can visit Kate at www.kate-walker.com.

  For Michelle Reid. A great writer, a great friend, whose support and whip-cracking was invaluable to me as I wrote this.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE villa looked just as she remembered it.

  Or rather, Rebecca acknowledged to herself, it looked just as it had always appeared in her dreams. Because the truth was that she had actually seen so very little of it on that one day she had ever spent inside it.

  The one day that should have been the start of her honeymoon.

  The one day of her marriage.

  They had arrived just as the sun was setting and so she had only had the briefest glimpse of the huge, elegant, white-painted building, the sweep of the bay behind it blue and crystal-clear. But it seemed that that had been enough to etch the image onto her mind with perfect clarity so that the memories that had surfaced in her sleep were far more detailed and accurate than she would ever have imagined she could describe when awake.

  Clearly the eyes of happiness recorded things much better than vision that was blurred and distorted by tears. Because that was how she remembered her arrival at the Villa Aristea, and then, just a few short hours later, her departure from it. She had reached the tiny island in the heights of delirious happiness, and left it just a few short hours later in the very depths of despair.

  She hadn’t even had time to unpack her case. Rebecca shivered in spite of the heat of the sun on her back as she recalled the way that Andreas had picked it up and flung it out of the door in a blazing, black rage. She had been so sure that he would have flung her out after it that she hadn’t stayed even to protest, but had fled in a rush, trying to convince herself that discretion was the better part of valour and that she would do better to wait until he’d calmed down before she tried to explain the truth. At least then she might have a hope that he would listen.

  She’d waited. And waited. But it had seemed that Andreas would never, ever calm down at all.

  Until now.

  ‘Is this the right place, kyria?’

  Behind her, on the steep, curving road, the taxi driver stirred restlessly in the afternoon heat. He was clearly anxious to get back to the tiny village and into the shade once again.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Rebecca assured him hastily, opening her bag and rooting in it awkwardly, hunting for her purse and thumbing through the unfamiliar notes she’d acquired in a rush at the very last minute, hunting for one that looked something like the amount on the meter. ‘Yes, this is the right place.’

  It was impossible not to contrast the shambles and discomfort of her arrival today with the way she had first visited the Villa Aristea barely a year before. Then she had travelled in the greatest possible comfort, flying to Rhodes in Andreas’ private jet and then being ferried in a helicopter across the sea to this island that was little more than a dot in the ocean.

  And she hadn’t had to lift a finger. Everything had been arranged for her. Everything planned to be the end of a perfect day and the start of a perfect marriage.

  Except, of course, it hadn’t worked out at all that way. That day had been the start of nothing and had brought the end of her ill-fated marriage before it had even really begun.

  Except in one way …

  Bitter tears burned at the backs of her eyes as she was forced to remember how Andreas had so ruthlessly made sure that their marriage could not be dissolved easily and swiftly.

  ‘There will be no annulment,’ he had declared coldly and harshly, making it plain that that was what had been at the back of his mind all the time. He hadn’t wanted her for himself any more, but he had made so sure that she could not be with anyone else for as long as he could keep her from it. ‘If you want your freedom, you will have to go through the full legal procedure.’

  ‘If I want my freedom!’ Rebecca had flung at him, blinded by pain and desperate to get out of there before she had broken down and let him see just what he had done to her. ‘f! I wouldn’t come back to you if you crawled over broken glass to come to me to beg for my return.’

  He’d tossed aside her furious protest with an indifferent shrug of one powerful shoulder, a look of scorn on his beautiful face.

  ‘You’ll come crawling to me before I ever even think of you, if only because you need money for something. I’ll be willing to bet that you’ll come looking for cash before the year is up.’

  ‘Never …’ Rebecca had begun, desperate to stop him from thinking of her like this. ‘I’d rather die.’

  He’d scorned that declaration too, swatting it away as if her fury were just a buzzing fly that had annoyed him.

  ‘You’ll be back—because you can’t help yourself. You’ll want to get your greedy, grasping hands on as much as you can before our marriage is finally over and done with.’

  ‘Kyria …’

  The taxi driver was still hovering, trying to give her change, it seemed.

  ‘Oh, no …’

  Rebecca waved him away, trying to find the strength to smile in spite of her memories. ‘Keep it. Keep the change.’

  She might need him later, she told herself. Sooner, rather than later, if this interview didn’t go well. But certainly at some point soon, she would need a taxi to take her back down to the ferry and it was as well to keep this man friendly as it seemed that he ran the only firm on this island.

  She barely heard his thanks or the roar of the car’s engine as it swung out into the road and set off down the hill again. Her gaze had gone back to the big, carved wooden door before her and her thoughts to the night, a year ago, when she had crept away from this place like a beaten dog, with her tail well and truly between her legs.

  ‘You’ll come crawling to me before I ever even think of you …’

  The brutal words echoed again and again inside her mind, making her head ache, and her thoughts blur. She had come crawling to him in desperation, because only desperation could drive her to fulfil his prediction, make the callous words come true when she had vowed that it was the last thing on earth that she would ever want. And she was desperate.

  But desperation wasn’t why she was here.

  The terrible news about her baby niece had driven her to write that letter to Andreas, expecting only ever to receive the
curtest of replies from him—if in fact he replied at all. She hoped for, prayed for a cheque that would help them out of the terrible fix they were in—a cheque that she had promised him that she would pay back if it was the last thing she did. But she had definitely not dared to hope for anything else.

  Certainly she hadn’t dared to hope that he would actually see her, or speak to her. Let her put her case in person.

  And of course he hadn’t.

  The formal letter had come almost by return of post.

  She was asked to meet with his lawyer. To state exactly why she needed the money and on what terms. And when he had the details then Mr Petrakos would consider her request.

  She had been still reeling from the curt coldness of the single typewritten sheet when the telephone had rung.

  ‘Andreas …’

  For the first time in almost twelve months Rebecca had let his name slip past her lips, whispering it aloud in the still, hot air, silent except for the buzz of insects amongst the flowers.

  She hadn’t even been able to say it when she had heard the unknown, accented voice at the other end of the phone ask to speak to Mrs Petrakos. In fact it had taken the space of several stunned heartbeats to even remember that Mrs Petrakos was her own name. She had gone back to using her maiden name after the brutally abrupt end to her marriage and had tried in all ways possible to put the fact that she had ever been Rebecca Petrakos, however briefly, out of her mind for good.

  ‘Come on, Rebecca, do something!’

  She spoke the words out loud, striving to push herself into action instead of standing there, foolishly, frozen to the spot. She seemed incapable of movement now that she was actually here.

  She’d moved fast enough when she’d finally absorbed the phone message from Andreas’ PA. Just to know that her husband had had an accident had been bad enough. At the words ‘car crash’, her blood had run cold, making her shiver in shock as the terrible truth hit home.