His Mistress for a Million

by Trish Morey

  ‘What happened to the deal, then?’

  He shrugged. ‘Last I heard, he was back in charge. Probably still losing money hand over fist to his turf accountant.’

  It was her fingers’ turn to still. ‘You let the deal fall through? I thought you hated him so much.’

  He sighed. ‘I did. Once.’

  Troubled now, she let her fingers resume their exploration, down his chest and circling his navel with her fingertips. ‘But why? What did he do to deserve that?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I need to know the kind of man I’m marrying. I need to understand. You seemed so ruthless then, so driven.’ She shivered and he tucked her in closer, his thumb stroking the nipple of one goose-bumped breast and flicking her thermostat to simmer.

  ‘A long time ago he was my father’s partner. They’d built a strong business together and everything seemed to be going well. But he’d asked my mother to marry him once, a long time before my father had married her. It seems he’d never forgiven him for that. Or her. So he bided his time watching the business grow and waiting for the perfect opportunity, when the business was cashed up and ready to make a major investment. He took the lot and left us with nothing. My father died barely a year later, a broken man, and I swore on his grave that I would one day get even.’

  ‘Oh.’ He’d tensed with his words, and her fingers worked to massage the pain away, stroking his flat belly and following the trail of hairs that arrowed downwards where she encountered him, thick and pulsing once more into life. ‘I understand now,’ she said, and she did. ‘I can see why you needed to get even.’

  He flipped over her then, so suddenly that she didn’t see it coming. ‘It’s history,’ he said as he buried his face in her neck and settled between her legs. ‘And it doesn’t matter any more. My mother tried to make me see that, but it was you who made me understand.’

  She shook her head as his hot tongue circled her nipples, first one and then the other, his breath like a heated caress where his tongue didn’t touch. ‘How?’

  But she did see the foil packet he had ready in his hand. She shook her head. ‘I want you, this time,’ she whispered. ‘It’s you I want to feel inside me, your flesh against mine.’ And he cast it aside and kissed her, hot and desperate and soul deep.

  She gasped into his mouth as he entered her in one tight, fluid stroke, gasped again when he started to move inside her, the delicious friction of his increasing rhythm sending tremors through every part of her. ‘For too long,’ he muttered through teeth clenched tight, ‘I was looking to the past. But in you…’ He stilled for a moment, poised at the brink as he looked down at her, caressing her face with the pads of his thumbs. ‘In you, I found something different. In you I found my future. I love you, Cleo.’

  And he lunged into her again, his cry rent from him like a cry of freedom, as together they spilled into their future.

  Epilogue

  HER mother was hanging out sheets on the line, her nanna sitting in the shade of the ancient peppercorn tree, when Andreas’ car pulled up alongside the homestead late the next morning. Cleo had warned them they were coming but still her mother turned and stared, while the twins bowled around a corner of the house, shooting each other up with guns they’d improvised from sticks and rubber bands and skidding to a halt when they saw the red sports car Andreas was unfolding himself from. ‘Wow,’ they said in unison. ‘Is that your car?’

  Andreas turned on his million-wattage smile as he pulled off his sunglasses and shook his head. ‘Sadly no, it is a hire car,’ and the boys’ faces dropped. ‘But I have one much better than this back on Santorini,’ and they wowed again and positively drooled as they circled the car like a couple of sharks.

  ‘I’ll give you a ride a little later,’ he said. ‘That is, if you like.’ Their eyes lit up on their combined, ‘Awesome!’ Cleo laughed and wondered how he could read children so well when he’d had so little to do with them. Maybe he’d make a pretty good father, she figured, if his reaction to her half-brothers was any indication. Maybe having his babies wouldn’t be such a hardship.

  Making them, she already knew, would be nothing but sheer pleasure.

  Her cheeks colouring into a blush she suspected she shouldn’t be brandishing when she was about to introduce the man she loved to her family, she slipped her hand in his and led him to where her mother stood, her eyes as wide as her expanding stomach, while Nanna’s watched on keen and interested. ‘Mum, Nanna, I’d like you to meet Andreas Xenides, the man I love, and the man I intend to marry.’

  ‘That is,’ Andreas added, turning on his dazzling smile again and bowing as he took first her mother’s and then her nanna’s hand in greeting, ‘if you permit me your daughter’s hand in marriage.’

  ‘Oh, my,’ her mother said, the concerned look she’d had on her face when they’d driven up transforming into her own wide smile. ‘Jack!’ she called as the screen door slammed and her husband emerged from the house. ‘Jack, come and meet Andreas. Cleo’s getting married!’

  Jack didn’t rush. He took his own sweet time, Cleo thought, as he let his laid-back stride carry him closer, his beefy arms swinging loosely by his sides and his eyes narrowed by the sun and still drinking in the scene, missing nothing. He pulled up a metre shy and the two men faced each other off, the Greek billionaire in the white shirt, with money clearly at his fingertips, and Jack in his moleskins, his sandy hair for once not flattened by his hat, and who clearly felt that out here, even being the dirt-poor farmer he was, he was king.

  He nodded, extending a wary hand. ‘Mr Xenides, Jack Carter.’

  ‘Call me Andreas, Mr Carter.’

  He nodded. ‘Andreas, it is. And just plain Jack is fine with me. I hear you made quite a ruckus in town with your fancy car. And now, I hear, you want to marry Cleo.’

  Beside her Andreas smiled. ‘That’s about the size of it, if you’ll allow me to, that is.’

  And Jack turned to Cleo. ‘And is this what you want, lovey?’

  Cleo beamed at the endearment. ‘It’s everything I want, but only on one condition.’

  Her stepfather’s face turned dark and he looked ready to take Andreas on, in case he took issue. ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘That you walk me down the aisle and give me away.’

  And she could have sworn her sun-hardened stepfather melted right there before her eyes.

  ‘Well,’ said her mum with a tear in her eyes, wiping her hands on her apron and looking for something to fill in the stunned-mullet silence from her husband, ‘you will both be staying for lunch? I’ve got a lamb roast on.’

  And they did stay, and afterwards Andreas rang his mother while his new family were busy with dessert, knowing it was morning now in Athens. ‘I have a surprise for you,’ he told her.

  ‘You’re marrying the Australian woman after all?’

  And he did a double take. ‘You knew?’

  She laughed. ‘Didn’t I tell you? Sometimes you don’t know what’s right there under your nose until it’s gone.’

  Andreas laughed then too. ‘You did,’ he told her, wondering if somehow she hadn’t known all along but still not understanding how.

  Then after dessert he took the twins for a spin in the car, after which they put their own two and two together.

  ‘You’re leaving again?’ they asked Cleo, almost simultaneously, sounding disappointed that with Andreas gone they might be deprived of an occasional ride in a sports car.

  And their nanna nodded wisely, as always. ‘But look at the bright side, boys, you’ll be able to visit Cleo and Andreas on Santorini and have a ride in his sports car there. Isn’t that right, Andreas?’ And Andreas nodded and Cleo laughed and knew right then and there she could stop looking for her own bright side, because she’d found it.

  Love.

  There was no brighter side.

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to
anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V./S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

  First published in Great Britain 2009

  Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,

  Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

  © Trish Morey 2009

  ISBN: 978-1-4089-1862-3