His Contract Christmas Bride

by Sharon Kendrick

  Her blue eyes narrowed suspiciously, as if she didn’t believe him. As if he was secretly making fun of her by comparing this matchbox of a dwelling to the sprawling square footage of his many homes. But he did mean it. He’d never been inside this riverside cottage before but he’d passed it often enough when he was rowing for the prestigious English boarding school he’d attended, where Lucy’s mother had been matron. The little house used to symbolise home for all the boys who were so far away from their own. He remembered seeing fairy lights in the window and a wreath on the door every Christmas. He remembered hearing laughter coming through an open door in the lush months of summer when the green reeds grew tall and the riverbank was bosky. But there was no Christmas wreath today, he noted.

  ‘It suits my needs perfectly,’ she said, rather primly.

  Her words sounded defensive and Drakon found himself staring at her left hand, registering each ringless finger before lifting his gaze to her eyes. It was unlikely that her situation had changed since the summer but you never knew... ‘You live here alone?’

  A faint frown appeared on her brow. ‘I do.’

  ‘So...there’s no man in your life?’

  Hot colour rushed into her cheeks. ‘I believe that’s what’s known as a rather impertinent question.’

  ‘Is there?’ he persisted.

  Her blush deepened. ‘No. Actually, there isn’t. Not that it’s any of your business,’ she said crossly, before fixing him with an enquiring look. ‘Look, what can I do for you, Drakon? You turn up without any kind of warning and then start interrogating me about my personal life, yet I’ve heard nothing from you for months. Forgive me if I’m confused. Is this just a random visit?’

  Drakon shook his head. He had planned how he was going to present this. To somehow build it up and carefully cushion the impact. To make it sound as if it was just part of life and he was dealing with it. He hadn’t been expecting to just come out and say it—or for the words to taste like bitter poison when he spoke them.

  ‘No. This wasn’t a chance visit. I intended to come here today. It’s Niko,’ he grated. ‘He’s dead.’

  Lucy blinked in confusion for his words made no sense. Because Niko was Drakon’s twin brother. The wilder version of Drakon. Niko was the unpredictable twin—always had been. The volatile twin. The one who made headlines for all the wrong reasons and had almost been expelled from school an unbelievable three times. But although Niko was reckless he was also full of life. Why, she remembered him as the kind of man who was positively bursting with life.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she said and afterwards wondered how she could have asked such a naïve question, in view of her own experience. ‘How can he possibly be dead?’

  Drakon’s face contorted with darkness and pain and that was when she knew he was speaking the truth.

  ‘He died of a drug overdose,’ he bit out. ‘Last month.’

  Lucy gasped, her fingertips flying to her lips, her heart crashing wildly against her ribcage as she wondered how she could have been so stupid. Didn’t she of all people know that young lives could be cut down like a blade of grass being sliced by a tractor at harvest time? Had she thought Drakon Konstantinou was immune to pain and loss, just because he was one of the world’s richest men and was always flying around the globe on his private jet, brokering deals to add even more dollars to his already massive fortune?

  She wanted to rush over to him. To fling her arms around his tense body and comfort him, as she had comforted innumerable grieving relatives on hospital wards in the past. But that was the trouble with sex. It changed things. You could never touch a former lover and pretend it was impartial, even if it was. ‘Oh, Drakon,’ she said, in a low voice, and could see from his blanched features and haunted eyes that he was in deep shock. ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea. Please. Won’t you sit down? Let me get you something.’ She looked around rather distractedly, trying to remember what was in the ancient drinks cabinet. ‘I think I have some whisky somewhere—’

  ‘I don’t want whisky,’ he said harshly.

  She nodded. ‘Okay. Then I’ll make you some tea. Strong tea with lots of sugar. That’s what you need.’

  To her surprise he didn’t object, just sank into one of the fireside armchairs, which looked too flimsy to be able to deal with his powerful frame, and Lucy sped into the kitchen, glad to have something to occupy herself with. Something to distract herself from her racing thoughts. But her hands were shaking so much that the china was chinking madly as she pulled cups and saucers down from one of the cupboards.

  Sucking in a deep breath, she waited for the kettle to boil, wondering why she hadn’t realised right from the beginning that something was wrong. Hadn’t she been taught to read the telltale signs of body language which might have suggested that here was a man mourning the loss of his only sibling? While instead she had been selfishly preoccupied with her own battered ego, reflecting on the fact that he’d dumped her after a long weekend of wild and totally unexpected sex. What did something like that matter in the light of what he’d just told her?

  She made the tea and frowned as she picked up the tray, because a nagging question still remained.

  Why had he told her?

  Slowly she went back into the tiny sitting room, her head still full of confusion. He turned to look at her and suddenly Lucy was scared by the expression on his rugged features. By the stony look which made his black eyes look so hard and bleak and cold—eyes which said quite clearly you can’t get close to me. Scared too by another instinctive urge to run over and hug him, wondering if she was using his heartache as an excuse to touch him again. Because hadn’t she yearned to stroke his silken flesh ever since he’d set her body on fire and made her realise what physical pleasure really meant?

  She poured tea, dropping four sugar cubes into his cup and giving it a quick stir, before placing it on a small table beside the fire. Then she sat down in a chair opposite him, her knees pressed tightly together. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ she questioned softly. ‘About what happened to Niko?’

  Talking about it was the last thing Drakon wanted, but if he was to get Lucy to agree to his demands it was unavoidable. And how hard could it be to do that? He was a master of negotiation in the business world—surely he was able to employ the same tools of demand, cooperation and compromise in his personal life if he were to achieve what it was he wanted.

  ‘How much do you know about my brother?’ he questioned.

  She hesitated, shrugging her shoulders a little awkwardly. ‘Not a lot. Once he left school he seemed to disappear off the radar.’

  ‘Neh. That’s a good way to describe what happened. He disappeared off the radar.’ Drakon’s voice grew distant and sounded as if it were coming from a long way off. But it was, he realised, with a jolt. It was coming from the past—and didn’t they say that the past was like a different country? The Konstantinou twins, two black-eyed little boys, pampered like princes by a battery of servants yet overlooked by the wealthy parents who had employed those servants. They shared almost identical DNA and, for many years, few people could tell them apart, until they heard them speak. So similar in looks and yet so different in character. Sometimes they’d even been able to trick their own parents—but then, they’d lived such separate lives from their mother and father maybe that wasn’t so surprising.

  ‘Niko was the older of us—by just one and a half minutes—but those vital ninety seconds were all that were needed for him to be in line to inherit the family business. He thought he was going to be a very wealthy man—until the will was read and he discovered there was nothing left. All the money had gone.’

  ‘How come?’

  Drakon stared at her. Her bluebell eyes were a compassionate blur and for a moment he almost confided in her, until he drew himself short, reminding himself that certain segments of the past were irrelevant. He’d come here
to talk about the future. ‘The reasons don’t matter,’ he said, the words acrid on his lips. ‘What is relevant is the way Niko coped with finding out the news, and the way he coped with it was with drugs. First it was a puff or two of dope at a party and then he started snorting cocaine, like so many of his buddies. But sooner or later, every addiction needs an additional boost because it isn’t working any more.’ His face twisted. ‘And that’s when he started on heroin.’

  She didn’t say anything. Had he expected her to? Had he secretly wanted her to come out with something trite and predictable so he could lash out as he had been wanting to lash out at someone for days now? He felt his jaw tighten as he continued with his story and yet somehow it was an unspeakable relief to unburden himself, because he hadn’t really talked about this with anyone. Not even Amy. He hadn’t dared. Had he been afraid that describing his twin’s fatal weakness might somehow reflect poorly on him? Might hold up a mirror to the cold darkness in his own soul and the guilt which gnawed away at him because he hadn’t been there for his brother when he’d most needed him?

  ‘I didn’t find this out until afterwards,’ he ground out. ‘Because he left Greece and kept his distance from me—from everyone, really—and resisted every attempt I made to meet up. I only realised afterwards that he wanted to hide the true extent of his drug habit from me. If I’d known I might have been able to do something, but I didn’t know. I guess I was too busy trying to make my fortune. Trying to recover something of the Konstantinou name and reputation.’ He sighed. ‘But eventually, I heard that Niko was living in Goa and was in a steady relationship and I can remember thinking that maybe things might be different. Personally, I’ve never believed in the transformative power of love—but that didn’t mean I wasn’t hopeful it might work for Niko.’ His mouth twisted cynically and there was a pause. ‘Apparently they had a beachside wedding and then I heard that she’d had a baby.’

  ‘B-baby?’ she echoed.

  Drakon saw the colour drain from her face but still he didn’t say it. It was as if he needed to mould the facts into some sort of recognisable structure before he hit her with the big one. Was he hoping to build up an element of sympathy, so she would find it impossible to say no to him? ‘He got in touch with me just after the birth, to tell me I was now an uncle. He...he asked me if I wanted to go and meet Xander for myself and I told him I would. So I scheduled in a trip to go and see them the following week and was hopeful that the birth of a healthy child might bring him the kind of fulfilment he’d been unable to find elsewhere. Maybe it would have done if he and his wife hadn’t decided to celebrate in their own time-honoured way. Not with a bottle of champagne or a candlelit dinner, but a lethal cocktail of narcotics.’

  Her face blanched even more. ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘Oh, neh,’ he agreed grimly. ‘My partner was on a business trip nearby and some instinct made me ask her to check on them unannounced.’ He paused, suddenly finding the words very difficult to say. ‘Their bodies were still warm by the time she got there. I got a local investigator to find out what he could, and a little searching revealed that Niko’s wife was as hooked on illegal substances as he was.’

  ‘Oh, Drakon. I’m so sorry.’

  He shook his head. ‘We spoke to the doula who’d been attending her throughout the pregnancy and the only thing I’m grateful for is that she must have retained some vestige of common sense, and was able to give up drugs for the whole nine months.’

  She flinched, the words spilling urgently from her mouth. ‘And the baby?’ she demanded. ‘What about the baby?’

  ‘Is unharmed,’ he supplied grimly. ‘The life force is powerful. He is lusty and strong and with his Greek nanny now—safe and warm not far from here, in London.’ He felt his mouth twist, as if recounting words he didn’t particularly want to say. ‘You see, Niko and his wife had named me as the child’s official guardian and so he is living with me.’

  She leaned forward, clasping her hands together as if in prayer, an expression of earnestness on her face. But he could see indecision there, too, and she seemed to be choosing her words carefully. ‘This is a heartbreaking story, Drakon—and I’m so sorry for your loss,’ she breathed. ‘But I’m still not quite sure why you’re telling me all this.’

  He stared at her. Was she really so naïve? Maybe she was. She’d certainly been innocent when he’d parted her thighs that hot summer evening and slid inside the unexpected tightness of her body. Though maybe he’d been the naïve one not to have realised that the wholesome Lucy Phillips had been untouched by another man. When he’d bumped into her in England she’d appeared almost invisible and the thought of seducing her couldn’t have been further from his mind. And yet things had inexplicably turned sexual when he’d dropped in on her when she’d been staying on his island.

  He remembered seeing her swimming in his pool, her strong arms arcing through the turquoise water in a graceful display of strength and power. Length after length he had watched her swim and when she’d eventually surfaced and blinked droplets of water from her eyes, she had looked genuinely surprised—and pleased—to see him. He shouldn’t have been turned on by her plain and practical swimsuit but he had been, though maybe because he’d never seen someone of her age wearing something so old-fashioned. Just as he shouldn’t have been unexpectedly charmed by the way she made him laugh—which was rare enough to be noteworthy. He’d found himself staying on for dinner, even though he hadn’t planned to—and even though he’d told himself that her dress was cheap, that hadn’t stopped him from being unable to tear his eyes away from the way the dark material had clung to her fleshy curves, had it?

  Maybe it was inevitable that they had started kissing—and just as inevitable that they’d ended up having sex. The unexpected and unwanted factor had been encountering her intact hymen and realising he was the first man she’d ever been intimate with. At the time he’d been irritated by the fact she hadn’t told him because, according to friends who knew about such things, taking a woman’s virginity brought with it all kinds of problems—not least the kind of mindless devotion which was the last thing he needed. In fact, he despised it, for reasons which still made him shudder. His mouth hardened. He had enough difficulty keeping women at arm’s length as it was, without some idealistic innocent longing for rose petals and wedding bells.

  But his irritation had lasted no longer than it took to resume his powerful rhythm inside her. And she had surprised him. Not just because she had proved to be an energetic and enthusiastic lover who had kissed more sweetly than any other woman he’d ever known. No. Because she seemed to have realised herself the limitations of their brief affair and to have accepted the fact that he had ghosted her from his life afterwards. She hadn’t made any awkward phone calls or sent texts carefully constructed in order to appear ‘casual’. And if his abundantly healthy ego had been fleetingly dented by her apparent eagerness to put what had happened behind her, the feeling had soon left him, because it was entirely mutual. But it made him realise that in many ways Lucy Phillips was exceptional. Emotionally independent, a trained midwife and, thus, the perfect candidate for what he needed...

  He felt his mouth dry as he studied her earnest face and the clothes which failed to flatter her curvy shape. It was hard now to believe that she had choked out her fulfilment as he had driven into her firm body or to imagine the way he had fingered her nipples in the blazing Greek sunshine so that they had puckered into tight little nubs just ripe for sucking. But when you stopped to think about it, all of this was hard to believe and he needed to present his case so that she would receive it sympathetically. Rising to his feet, he addressed her stumbled question as he slowly approached her fireside chair. ‘I’m telling you because I need your help, Lucy.’

  ‘My help?’ she echoed, her bright eyes looking up at him in surprise as his shadow enveloped her in darkness. ‘Are you kidding? How on earth can I help someone like you when you’re one of t
he richest men in the world and I have practically nothing?’

  ‘No, I’m not kidding,’ he negated firmly. ‘And, far from having nothing, you have something I need very badly. Niko’s baby needs security and continuity. He needs a home and I’m in a position to offer him one. But not on my own. Not as a single man whose work takes him to opposite sides of the world and who has no experience of babies, or children. And that’s why I’m asking you to marry me, Lucy. To be my wife and the mother of my orphaned nephew.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  LUCY’S MOUTH FELL open as she stared into the face of the powerful Greek billionaire, the flickering firelight illuminating the ebony and gold of his rugged features. She couldn’t believe what Drakon had just asked her and his question made her feel as if she was taking part in a dream. An extra-surreal dream. But surely he wouldn’t be looking so serious if he hadn’t meant it. ‘You want me to marry you?’ she verified slowly.

  He nodded—though his brief frown suggested he didn’t quite agree with her choice of words. ‘I do.’

  Lucy shook her hair and her heavy ponytail slithered like a thick rope against her back. Wasn’t it crazy—and sad—how, in life, timing was everything? If her brother hadn’t been in the wrong place at the wrong time, he would still be here. And if Drakon Konstantinou had asked her this very question a few months earlier, her reaction to it would have been totally different. Because when she’d returned home after her brief excursion to his island home—high on a mixture of raging hormones and a heady introduction to multiple orgasms—she had prayed for a scenario just like this. She’d nursed the unrealistic fantasy that what she and Drakon had shared had been special. Super-special. She had longed for him to suddenly decide his life was empty without her and that he wanted them to make a go of things. Why wouldn’t she, when he was like every woman’s dream man—despite his undeniable arrogance and detachment? When she’d always had a secret crush on him...