by Lynne Graham
Sergios was working on a laptop in a sunlit room while simultaneously talking on the phone. Her troubled gaze locked to his bold bronzed profile. No matter how angry he made her she could never deny that he was drop-dead beautiful to look at any time of day. Finishing the call, he turned his sleek dark head, brilliant eyes welding to her, and her colour fluctuated wildly while her mouth ran dry at the impact of his gaze. ‘Beatriz…’
‘I’m taking the children to the beach. You should come with us. Nectarios is surprised that you’ve already gone back to work.’
‘I don’t do kids and beaches,’ Sergios replied with a suggestive wince at the prospect of such a family outing.
Bee threw back her slim shoulders and spoke her mind, ‘Then it’s time you learned. Those kids need you…they need a father as well as a mother.’
‘I don’t know how to be a father. I never had one of my own—’
‘That doesn’t mean you can’t do better for your cousin’s children,’ Bee cut in, immediately dismissing his argument in a manner that made his stubborn jaw line clench. ‘Even an occasional father is better than no father at all. My father wasn’t interested in me and I’ve felt that lack all my life.’
Under attack for his views, Sergios had sprung upright. He shrugged a broad shoulder and raked an impatient hand through his hair. His wide sensual mouth had taken on a sardonic curve. ‘Beatriz—’
‘No, don’t you dare try to shut me up because I’m saying things you don’t want to hear!’ Beatriz shot back at him in annoyance. ‘Even if you can only bring yourself to give the kids an hour once a week it would be better than no time at all. One hour, Sergios, that’s all I’m asking for and then you can forget about them again.’
Sergios studied her grimly. ‘I’ve told you how I feel. I married you so that you could take care of them.’
‘Was that our “deal”?’ Bee queried in a tone of scorn. ‘I was just wondering. As you’ve already changed the terms on my side of the fence, why do you have to be so inflexible when it comes to your own?’
Sergios raised a brow. ‘If I come to the beach will you share a room without further argument?’
Bee sighed in frustration. ‘Relationships don’t work like deals.’
‘Don’t they? Are you saying that you don’t believe in give and take?’
‘Of course, I do but I don’t want to give or take sex like it’s some sort of service or currency,’ Bee told him with vehement distaste.
‘Sex and money make the world go round,’ Sergios jibed.
‘I’m better than that—I’m worth more than that and so should you be. We’re not animals or sex workers.’
Her love of frankness was peppered with an unexpected penchant for drama that amused him and he marvelled that he could ever have considered her plain or willing to please. With those vivid green eyes, that perfect skin and ripe pink mouth she was the very striking image of natural beauty. He could still barely believe that she was the only woman he had ever met to have refused him. While rejection might gall him her unattainability was a huge turn-on for him as well and when she had admitted she was a virgin he had understood her reluctance a great deal better and valued her all the more.
Recognising the tension in the atmosphere, Bee stiffened. He gave a look, just a look from his smouldering dark golden eyes and her nipples tightened, her tummy flipped and moist heat surged between her thighs. Colouring, she hastily fixed her eyes elsewhere, outraged that she could have so little control over her own body.
‘All right,’ she said abruptly, spinning back to deal him a withering look that almost made him laugh. ‘If you do the hour a week with the children without complaining, I won’t argue about sharing a room any more. Over breakfast I realised that your grandfather doesn’t miss a trick and he is suspicious.’
‘I said a long time ago that I would never marry again and he knows me well. Naturally he’s sceptical about our marriage.’
‘See you down at the beach,’ Bee responded a touch sourly, for she was not pleased that she had had to give way on the bedroom issue. Unfortunately her previous attempts to persuade Sergio to get involved with his cousin’s children had proved fruitless and if there was anything she could do to improve that situation she felt she had to make the most of the opportunity.
Karen was on duty and the children were already dressed in their swimming togs while a beach bag packed with toys and drinks awaited her. Paris led the way down through the shady belt of pine forest to the crisp white sand. They were peering into a rock pool when Sergios arrived. Wearing denim cut-offs with an unbuttoned shirt and displaying a flat and corrugated muscular six-pack that took Bee’s breath away, Sergios strode across the sand to join them. The boys made a beeline for him, touchingly eager for his attention. Paris chattered about boy things like dead crabs, sharks and fishing while Bee held Milo and Eleni’s hands to prevent them from crowding Sergios. She paddled with the toddlers in the whispering surf to amuse them. When Paris began building a sandcastle, Milo and Eleni ran back to join their brother.
Sergios walked across to Bee.
‘Thirty-two minutes and counting,’ she warned him in case he was thinking of cutting his agreed hour short.
An appreciative grin slashed his handsome mouth. ‘I haven’t got a stopwatch on the time.’
‘What happened to your father?’ she asked in a rush before she could lose her nerve.
As he looked out to sea his eyes narrowed. ‘He died at the age of twenty-two trying to qualify as a racing driver.’
‘You never knew him?’
‘No, but even if Petros had lived he wouldn’t have taken anything to do with me.’ Sergios volunteered that opinion with telling derision. ‘My mother, Ariana, was a teenage receptionist he knocked up on one of the rare days that he showed up to work for Nectarios.’
‘Did your mother ever tell him about you?’ Bee prompted.
‘He refused her calls and got her sacked when she tried to see him. She didn’t know she had any rights and she had no family to back her up. Petros had no interest in being a father.’
‘It must have been very tough for so young a girl to get by as a single parent.’
‘She developed diabetes while she was pregnant. Her health was never good after my birth. I stole to keep us,’ he admitted succinctly. ‘By the age of fourteen I was a veteran car thief.’
‘From that to…this…’ Her spread hands encompassed the big opulent house beyond the forest and the island owned by his grandfather. ‘Must have been a huge step for you.’
‘Nectarios was very patient. It must’ve been even harder for him. I was poorly educated, bitter about my mother’s death and as feral as an animal when he first employed me. But he never gave up on me.’
‘You were probably a more worthwhile investment of his time than the father you never met,’ Bee offered.
Sergios surveyed her steadily, his stunning gaze reflecting the sunlight as he slowly shook his arrogant head in apparent wonderment at that view. ‘Only you would think the best of me after what I’ve just told you about my juvenile crime record, yineka mou.’
Bee coloured, noticed that Milo was approaching the sea with a bucket and sped off to watch over the little boy. But it was Sergios who stepped from behind her and scooped up Milo as he teetered uncertainly ankle deep in the surging water, swinging the child up in the air so that he laughed uproariously before depositing him and, thanks to Bee’s efforts, a filled bucket of water back beside the sandcastle.
Eleni her silent companion, Bee spread the rug and Sergios threw himself down beside her. As she knelt he closed a hand into her chestnut hair and lifted her head, searching her oval face with brooding eyes. She gazed back at him with a bemused frown. ‘What do you want from me?’ she questioned in frustration.
‘
Right now?’ Sergios released a roughened laugh that danced along her taut spine like trailing fingertips. ‘Anything you’ll give me. Haven’t you worked that out yet?’
He crushed her mouth under his, tasting her with an earthy eroticism that fired up every skin cell in her quivering body. Hunger rampaged through her like a fire burning out of control and the strength of that hunger scared her so much that she thrust him back from her, her attention shooting past him to check that the children were still all right. Paris had been watching them kiss and he turned away, embarrassed by the display but no more so than Bee was. Sergio rested back on an elbow, one raised thigh doing little to conceal the bold outline of his arousal below the denim. Suddenly as hot as though she were roasting in the fires of hell, Bee dragged her gaze from him and watched the children instead.
‘You’re trying to use me because I’m the only woman available to you right now,’ she condemned half under her breath.
Sergios ran a fingertip down her arm and she turned her head reluctantly to collide with his glittering dark eyes. ‘Do I really strike you as that desperate?’
Her full mouth compressed. ‘I didn’t say desperate.’
‘I can leave the island any time I like to scratch an itch.’
‘Not if you want to convince your grandfather that you’re a happily married man.’
‘I could easily manufacture a business crisis that demanded my presence,’ Sergios countered lazily. ‘You have a remarkably low opinion of your own attraction.’
‘Merely a realistic one. Men have never beaten a path to my door,’ Bee admitted without concern. ‘Jon was special for a while but once he realised that my mother and I were a package he backed off.’
‘And married a wealthy judge’s daughter. He’s ambitious, not a guy with a bleeding heart,’ Sergios commented, letting her know how much he knew and making her body tense with resentment over the professional snooping that had delivered such facts. ‘Doesn’t it strike you as odd that he should now be approaching you as the representative of a children’s charity?’
Bee ignored the hint that Jon was an opportunist because she did not intend to adopt Sergios’s cynicism as her yardstick when it came to judging people’s motives. ‘No. As your wife I could be of real use to the charity.’
‘And as my ex-wife you could be of even more use to Jon,’ Sergios completed with sardonic bite. ‘Be careful. You could be his passport to another world.’
‘I’m not stupid.’
‘Not stupid, but you are naive and trusting.’ He studied her with amusement. ‘After all, you ignored all the warnings and married me.’
‘If you treat me with respect I will treat you the same,’ Bee swore. ‘I don’t lie or cheat and I don’t like being manipulated.’
Sergios laughed out loud. ‘And I’m a very manipulative guy.’
‘I know,’ Bee said gravely. ‘But now you’ve got me in the same bed that’s as far as it goes.’
His curling black lashes semi-concealed his stunning eyes. ‘That would be such a waste, Beatriz. We have the opportunity, the chemistry.’
‘With all due respect, Sergios,’ Beatriz murmured sweetly, cutting in, ‘that’s baloney. You only want to bed me because you believe it’ll make us seem more intimate and therefore more of a couple for your grandfather’s benefit. And while I think he’s a lovely old man, I don’t want to go that far to please.’
‘I can make you want me,’ Sergios reminded her smooth as silk but it was the tough guy talking, his dark eyes hard as ebony, his strong bone structure taut with controlled aggression.
‘But only in the line of temporary insanity. It doesn’t last,’ Bee traded, longing for the smile and the laughter that had been there only minutes earlier and suddenly recognising another danger.
It would be so easy to fall for this man she had married, she grasped with a sudden stab of apprehension. He wasn’t just gorgeous to look at, he was an intensely charismatic man. Unfortunately he had very few scruples. If she let him, he would use her and discard her again without thought or regret. Where would she be then? Hopelessly in love with a guy who didn’t love her back and who betrayed her with other women? She suppressed a shudder at that daunting image, and her heart, which he had made beat a little faster, steadied again.
A ball suddenly thumped into her side and the breath she was holding in escaped in a startled huff. Instantly Sergios was vaulting upright and telling Paris off, but Bee was relieved by the interruption and quick to intervene. She threw the ball back to the boys, retrieved Eleni from the shells she was collecting and joined in their game.
Unappreciative of the fact that she was using the children as a convenient shield, Sergios was equally challenged by the idea that she could so easily discard the idea of becoming a proper wife. He thought of the countless women who had gone to extraordinary lengths to get him to the altar and failed and then he looked at Beatriz, distinctly unimpressed by what he had to offer in bed or out of it. He was out of his element with a woman who put a value on things without a price. He didn’t do feelings, fidelity or…virgins. Basically he operated on the belief that women were all the same, money greased the wheels of his affairs and he had few preferences. That ideology had carried him along a safe smooth path after his first marriage right up to the present day. But nothing in that credo fitted Beatriz Blake. In her own quiet way she was a total maverick.
A manservant came down to the beach to tell Sergios about an important call. He departed and Bee tried not to care that he had gone, leaving behind a space that absolutely nothing else could fill. It was impossible to be unaware of a personality and a temperament as larger than life as Sergios Demonides. When Bee trekked up from the beach late afternoon with two tired little boys and an equally tired and cross little girl, she was damp and sandy and pink from the sun in spite of her high factor sun cream.
Having fed Eleni and spent some time cuddling the little girl while chatting with the nannies about the child’s upcoming surgery that would hopefully improve her hearing, Bee left the nursery and went for a shower before changing for dinner. In the bedroom she found several boxes of exclusive designer nightwear on the bed in her size, items fashioned to show off the female body for a man’s benefit and not at all the sort of thing that Bee wore for comfort and cosiness. She could barely believe Sergios’s nerve in ordering such items for her but it was certainly beginning to sink in on her that he was a very determined man. When she returned to the bedroom, clad in her own light robe, Sergios was there and she stiffened, unaccustomed to the lack of privacy entailed in sharing a bedroom. Engaged in tying the sash on the robe to prevent it from falling open, she hovered uncomfortably.
‘Did you order those nightgowns for me?’ she pressed.
‘Yes. Why not?’
‘They’re not the sort of thing I would wear.’
Sergios shrugged off the assurance. ‘My grandfather has decided to return to his home.’
‘I thought it was uninhabitable.’
‘Two rooms are but it’s a substantial property. I think that was an excuse to allow him to check us out,’ Sergios confided wryly. ‘He’s taking the children and their nannies back with him.’
Her head flew up, green eyes wide with surprise and bewilderment ‘Why on earth would he take the kids with him?’
‘Because it’s a rare newly married couple who want three children around on their honeymoon,’ Sergios drawled, his face impassive. ‘Don’t make a fuss about this. It’s a well-meant offer and he is their grandfather—’
‘Yes, I know he is but—’
‘Objecting isn’t an option,’ Sergios sliced in with sudden impatience. ‘It’s a done deal and it would look strange if we turned him down.’
Bee could not hide her consternation at the arrangement that had been agreed behind her back. He had m
arried her to act as a mother to those children but it seemed that she was not entitled to the rights or feelings of a mother if they conflicted with his wishes. ‘Yes, but the children are just getting used to me. It’s unsettling for them to be passed around like that.’
‘You can go over and see them every day if you like.’ His beautiful wilful mouth took on a sardonic slant. ‘First and foremost you are my wife, Beatriz. Start acting like one.’
Bee reddened as though she had been disciplined for wrongdoing, her temper flaring inside her. ‘Is that an order, sir?’
‘Ne…yes, it is,’ Sergios confirmed without hesitation or any hint of amusement. ‘Let’s keep it simple. I tell you what I want, you do it.’
Those candid words still echoing in her ears, Bee vanished back into her bathroom to do her make-up. Being ordered around when she was naked below a wrap didn’t feel right or comfortable. But then she never had liked being told what to do. In addition she was very angry with him. He had encouraged her to act like a mother, only to snatch the privilege back again when it no longer suited him. Act like a wife? If she did that he wouldn’t like it at all…for a wife would make demands.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CLEARLY in no mood to make the effort required to convince the staff that he was an attentive new husband, Sergios did not join Bee at the dinner table until she was halfway through her meal and the silence while they ate together screamed in her ears like chalk scraping down a blackboard.
‘I didn’t think you’d be the type to sulk.’
‘Am I allowed to shout at you, sir?’
‘Enough already with the sir,’ Sergios advised impatiently.
Her appetite dying, Bee pushed her plate away.
‘I’ll take you out sailing tomorrow morning,’ he announced with the air of a man expecting a round of applause for his thoughtfulness.
‘Lucky me,’ Bee droned in a long-suffering voice.
