by Olivia Gates
He’d come for the baby…and his ex-wife.
Naomi Sinclair had once fallen hard for Andreas Sarantos. Marrying the irresistible Greek venture capitalist had seared her soul with pleasure—and despair. For she soon discovered he was incapable of love. Now her ex-husband is back…to claim her orphaned ten-month-old niece.
Andreas let Naomi get away once. But adopting his best friend’s baby girl gives him the leverage he needs to bring his unwilling ex-wife back to his bed. Will having the only woman he’s ever wanted erase the scars of his dark past? Or will he lose Naomi, this time forever?
“So What Was Your Scenario? That I Was Here To Extort You And Once You Gave Me A Mind-Blowing Send-Off, I’d Walk Away?”
“What else could I think? You can’t be considering taking Dora for real,” Naomi cried. “For God’s sake, Andreas, you know you don’t want a baby and won’t be able to give her the home and family life she needs and deserves.”
He shrugged. “Probably. That’s why I don’t intend to take Dorothea from you.”
Her heart detonated with brutal hope. “Y-you don’t?”
Leaning one knee down, he dipped the mattress, tumbling her toward him, and murmured, “I don’t.”
Before she collapsed back with relief, his hand dove beneath the sheets and cupped her breast, giving it a delicious squeeze. “I do intend to take you, though.”
* * *
The Sarantos Baby Bargain is part of the #1 bestselling miniseries from Harlequin Desire—
Billionaires & Babies: Powerful men…wrapped around their babies’ little fingers.
* * *
If you’re on Twitter, tell us what you think of Harlequin Desire!
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Dear Reader,
I first met Andreas Sarantos in Claiming His Own, his youngest sister’s book. He was this enigmatic force of darkness that not even his family understood or could approach. And I knew that he had a complex and dark story that I just had to find out and write.
But even I didn’t expect the twisting depths he took me through as I wrote his book. His story left me perpetually at the edge of my seat. Not to mention that the passion between him and his heroine, Naomi Sinclair, was off the charts from the first page, with the emotional depths even more searing. It’s true what they say about icebergs…we only see their tips. And once such icy men like Andreas melt, they produce the most raging conflagrations—as Andreas did in his passionate duel with Naomi, even as they struggled to become a family around a baby girl who’d become the center of both their universes.
I so hope you enjoy their story as much as I did.
I love to hear from readers, so please contact me at [email protected]. Connect with me on Facebook, at www.facebook.com/OliviaGatesAuthor; on Twitter, @OliviaGates; and on Goodreads, at www.goodreads.com/author/show/405461.Olivia_Gates.
To find out about my latest releases, to read excerpts and sign up for giveaways, please visit www.oliviagates.com.
Enjoy, and thanks for reading.
Olivia Gates
THE SARANTOS BABY BARGAIN
Olivia Gates
Books by Olivia Gates
Harlequin Desire
The Sarantos Secret Baby #2080
∆To Touch a Sheikh #2103
A Secret Birthright #2136
‡The Sheikh’s Redemption #2165
‡The Sheikh’s Claim #2183
‡The Sheikh’s Destiny #2201
ΏTemporarily His Princess #2231
ΏConveniently His Princess #2255
Claiming His Own #2265
ΏSeducing His Princess #2290
The Sarantos Baby Bargain #2301
Silhouette Desire
*The Desert Lord’s Baby #1872
*The Desert Lord’s Bride #1884
*The Desert King #1896
**The Once and Future Prince #1942
**The Prodigal Prince’s Seduction #1948
**The Illegitimate King #1954
Billionaire, M.D. #2005
In Too Deep #2025 “The Sheikh’s Bargained Bride”
∆To Tame a Sheikh #2050
∆To Tempt a Sheikh #2069
* Throne of Judar
**The Castaldini Crown
∆Pride of Zohayd
‡Desert Knights
ΏMarried by Royal Decree
Other titles by this author available in ebook format.
OLIVIA GATES
has always pursued creative passions such as singing and handicrafts. She still does, but only one of her passions grew gratifying enough, consuming enough, to become an ongoing career—writing.
She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters, then exploring and untangling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heart-wrenching heartache and hope, their every heart-pounding doubt and trial, until she leads them to an indisputably earned and gloriously satisfying happy ending.
When she’s not writing, she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding Angora cat. Visit Olivia at www.oliviagates.com.
To all my readers. Thanks so much for all your support and enthusiasm. It’s for you that I keep writing.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Excerpt
One
Naomi Sinclair stared at the face filling the TV screen in her partner’s office, an avalanche of memories swamping her. Memories of a time when she’d known exactly how the Titanic had felt.
She’d crashed into her own iceberg, after all. A colossal one by the name of Andreas Sarantos. The one whose ice now reached out from the screen to freeze her marrow...and simultaneously spill lava into her bloodstream.
Despite all the cautionary tales of what befell those who approached him, she’d steamed ahead on an intercept course. When she’d collided with him, it hadn’t been for a catastrophic but brief encounter. Oh, no. She’d smashed herself against his frozen annihilation for two tumultuous years. Total wreckage had been the only possible outcome.
Now her whole being quivered at seeing Andreas again, after four long years. With the sound off, and with him looking right at her so fiercely, she could imagine him saying what he’d said that first day she’d pursued him.
You don’t want to get mixed up with me, Ms. Sinclair. Walk away. While you still can.
She could still hear his voice, dark and pulsing with sensual menace, that slight Greek accent making it more compelling. Could still feel his eyes burning her with their inimitable brand of aloof yet searing lust.
She hadn’t heeded his warning. Not before she’d had a protracted demonstration of how right he’d been. His words had not been a cautioning, but a promise. Of destruction. One he’d carried out. And she’d had no one to blame but herself.
“What do you know! He’s back in town.”
The comment, laced with surprise and not a little excitement, pulled Naomi back to reality with a thud.
Tearing her gaze from the gorgeous yet forbidding face still filling the screen, she blinked at her partner.
Malcolm Ulrich’s comment made her realize where Andreas was. In
front of his Fifth Avenue headquarters. He was “back in town.” Where he hadn’t been for four years.
Though she knew he could be in the next room and make no effort to see her, her heart hammered at the realization.
Malcolm turned his gaze to her, his green eyes eager. “I’d just about given up on doing business with him, since he deals only in person, and only when he’s here.” Her partner looked at the TV again. “But here he is.”
She unwillingly followed suit, found Andreas’s eyes drilling into hers as he glowered at the camera with all the tolerance of a wolf regarding a rabbit.
Malcolm sighed. “I still can’t believe I didn’t manage to pin him down to something when he pulled our fat out of the fire back in Crete, then came here personally to discuss how he resolved our problem with Stephanides. But it’s never too late, and that guy is bigger than ever. This time I’ll do whatever it takes to nail down his elusive hide long enough for him to give our expansion plans serious consideration.”
A scoff almost escaped her. She hadn’t gotten “serious consideration” from Andreas when she’d been in his bed every night. Not even mind-blowing sex had swayed him to get involved in something he hadn’t considered “financially feasible.” He’d said their sustainable development methods posed too many logistical problems and promised too little profit for him to bother with. That had been the sum total of the business talk they’d had during their...liaison.
But she doubted telling Malcolm that would dissuade him from continuing his pursuit of Andreas. And it might make him suspect there’d been more between her and Andreas than he, and the world, knew. Only Nadine, her only sister, and Petros, his only friend, had known the truth. To the world, she and Andreas had been two professionals who’d crossed paths sporadically, he as the Greek multibillionaire venture capitalist whose magic touch every business in the world craved, and she as a partner in a real estate development company struggling to make its mark in an increasingly competitive field.
When it had been over, she’d been endlessly grateful for that fact. No one knew of her folly, making it possible for her to pretend the ordeal had never happened. And she wanted to keep it that way. As much as it pained her, she had to let Malcolm butt his head against the wall that was Andreas Sarantos.
But it wasn’t as if Malcolm didn’t know it was probably futile, anyway. He’d been after Andreas’s transformative financing even before they’d become partners seven years ago. It was when Andreas finally answered one of Malcolm’s persistent invitations that she’d first met him, a year after she, Malcolm and Ken had set up Sinclair, Ulrich & Newman, or SUN Developments.
Andreas had come to inspect one of their first projects, with Malcolm hoping to tempt him to finance their ambitious offshore expansion plans.
From photos, Naomi had already thought him the most incredible looking man she’d ever seen. But it had taken that face-to-face encounter to turn her inside out.
His gaze and handshake had been cool, detached, yet an all-out invasion at the same time. Throughout his fifteen-minute presence, he’d fascinated and intimidated her as no one had ever done. He’d made few comments, but those had been so ruthlessly denuding, they’d uncovered weaknesses neither she nor her partners had realized had been inherent in their system. Then he’d abruptly taken his leave, giving no indication if he’d been interested or not in their business plan—or in her.
That hadn’t stopped her from thinking of him to distraction afterward....
The images on the screen changed, interrupting her reminiscing. Her gaze clung to his figure as he strode away to his limo. Even from the back, he looked every inch the indifferent raider who conquered without trying, devastated without effort and cared nothing about the damage he left in his wake. The reporter, a woman evidently unnerved by her close encounter with the Greek god, regretted that she hadn’t been able to get enough from Mr. Sarantos.
Enough from, or of? a voice inside Naomi scoffed.
But if she could have given the woman a word of advice, she would have told her that no one got a thing from Andreas Sarantos. Nothing but hurt, heartache and humiliation.
Malcolm reached for his cell phone. “I’d better call him right away, reserve the first free hour he has while he’s here, before the whole city starts hounding him.”
Feeling as if she’d run a mile, Naomi rose unsteadily to her feet. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“Hey...” Malcolm stood, too, his expression dismayed. “We haven’t even started our meeting.”
“There’s always tomorrow.” Naomi stopped at the door, mainly to lean on it until she regained her balance. “And I’d probably be useless to you, worrying about Dora, anyway.”
Which was, incidentally, true. Leaving Dora with a slight fever had made her unable to focus on anything all day. She’d spent most of it checking back with Hannah obsessively, though her nanny kept insisting everything was fine. Now Andreas’s unexpected return—even when Naomi was certain that the news spot would be her only exposure to him—had finished off any possibility for coherent thinking today. Might as well head home early.
She attempted a smile. “Just as well you found a more important thing to pursue today.”
“Nothing is more important than you!”
Naomi’s smile remained unchanged at his protest, and she made no response as she closed his office door behind her.
Malcolm had always made such gallant statements, but lately she’d been detecting something more in his courteous remarks. Something she hoped she was wrong about. She’d hate it if anything spoiled their friction-free working relationship and friendship. She’d started the partnership with him and Ken in the first place because both men had been happily married. But after Malcolm’s wife died from cancer three years ago, she’d started picking up different vibes from him. They’d become more noticeable since Nadine’s and Petros’s deaths three months ago. Naomi dreaded thinking Malcolm might be rebooting his program with her as the object of his monogamy.
Her mind was overflowing with this disturbing possibility and with Andreas’s out-of-the-blue return when she entered her apartment in Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
She’d thrown her purse on the foyer table and was hastily hanging up her coat when she heard footsteps rushing toward her. She swung around to find Hannah, once her nanny and now Dora’s, looking anxious.
The heart that had been thudding all the way here now pounded with alarm. “Is Dora’s fever up again? Why didn’t you call me? I would have come back at once, taken her to the doctor!”
Hannah looked momentarily taken aback before waving her hand. “Oh, I told you countless times today that her temperature went down after you gave her medicine, and hasn’t come up again. We had a wonderful day and she went down for the night a couple of hours early.”
Naomi leaned against the wall as tension deflated abruptly. She exhaled. “When you came rushing like that—God, my mind’s been all over the place, more than usual today.”
Sympathy overflowed in Hannah’s shrewd hazel eyes. “After what you’ve been through, it’s natural for you to be jumpy. It’s amazing you’ve held up this well. But you don’t have to worry about Dora. Robust little tykes like her can weather far more than a temperature. After raising four kids of my own, and you and Nadine, with Dora my seventh baby, I should know.”
“While I feel I know nothing,” Naomi lamented. “Next week Dora will be ten months old and I still feel like a total novice. I keep worrying every minute she’s out of my sight. Accidents do happen....” Like the accident that had taken Nadine’s and Petros’s lives.
The words clogged in her throat, the wound that had never stopped bleeding for the past three months opening yet again.
Hannah reached for her, gave her one of those hugs that, as far back as she could remember, had always made things better even at the worst of times.
“Being paranoid is part of being a parent, sweetie. And you have more reason than usual for your anxieties. But we won’t let anything happen to our Dora, ever, and she’ll grow up safe and loved, and become a beautiful, exceptional woman like her mom and aunt.”
Agony swelled all over again as her sister’s exuberant face filled Naomi’s mind. Before tears flowed, she nodded into Hannah’s ample shoulder, letting her touch and scent soothe her. Hannah had always been an integral part of her life, filling the void her mother had left behind when she’d died when Naomi was only thirteen.
Sniffling and attempting a smile, she pulled away. “So why did you come rushing to the door like that? Did you think I was an intruder or something, since I’m a bit early? Shouldn’t you have come armed?” Her smile wobbled as another alarm sent her hair-trigger nerves into an uproar again. “If you ever suspect anything of the sort, lock yourself in a room with Dora and call the police—”
Hannah raised both hands. “You really are extra jumpy today. This apartment building is intruder-proof, and you’ve certainly padlocked all entrances against an invading army. Anyone who comes in here has to be invited.” She stopped, hesitated, unease creeping over her genial face again. “Which brings me to the reason I rushed out to intercept you.”
“Intercept me...before what?”
“Before you walked into your family room and found me.”
Naomi lurched, a spear of shock lodging in her heart.
That voice. The voice that had never stopped whispering its insidious spell inside her mind.
Andreas.
A bolt of stupefaction wrenched her around.
And there he was, filling the archway of her foyer.
Andreas Sarantos. The man she’d barely escaped four years ago, with her soul and psyche in tatters.
It was impossible, preposterous for him to be here. In her apartment, where he’d never even dropped her off, let alone set foot inside, during the years they’d been together...though not really together.
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