Proof 0f Their Forbidden Night (HQR Presents)

by Chantelle Shaw

  ‘Of course I care about Stelios,’ she said, forcing her mind away from the dangerous path it seemed intent on following.

  ‘But you are not in love with my father and he is not in love with you.’ Andreas tightened his hold around her waist when she attempted to pull herself out of his arms. She discovered that while they had been dancing he had steered them towards the door of the ballroom. Without giving her a chance to protest, he whisked her out to the entrance hall and across to the library.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded after he closed the library door and leaned his back against it, crossing his arms over his chest. ‘What is the truth about your relationship with my father?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ Isla prevaricated.

  ‘I’m asking you.’

  She stayed silent and Andreas shrugged. ‘I’m prepared to stand here all night until you give me a believable answer. If you are not interested in Stelios’s money, and I am convinced from my observations of the two of you that you do not have a physical relationship with my father, why did you agree to marry him?’

  It would be wrong for her to betray Stelios’s trust and reveal that he was dying. But Isla felt guilty that she could not be honest with Andreas. She chewed her bottom lip and then gave a heavy sigh. ‘I met Stelios many years ago when I was a child.’

  Andreas looked puzzled. ‘Where did you meet him?’

  ‘He was friendly with my mother. Mum worked for a company in England which had been bought by Karelis Corp. She was Stelios’s secretary but their relationship developed and they became...close.’ Her voice faltered when Andreas frowned. ‘I was very young but I remember that Stelios used to come and stay with us.’

  ‘Are you saying that your mother was my father’s mistress?’

  ‘You make it sound tawdry but Mum was in love with Stelios and he loved her,’ Isla said defensively. ‘I can only have been four or five, but I remember it was a happy time. My mum even asked me if I would like Stelios to be my father.’

  Andreas swore. ‘He was already a father to me and my sister. Nefeli was a baby when he went off to play happy families with you and your mother in England.’

  She bit her lip. ‘I was too young to have understood that Stelios had a family in Greece.’

  ‘Your mother must have been aware that Stelios was being unfaithful to his wife. Where was your father?’

  ‘I have no idea. He left when I was a few months old.’

  ‘So your mother became a rich man’s mistress.’

  Isla’s grey eyes flashed. ‘Mum loved your father. She never met anyone else after he stopped coming to visit. She didn’t talk about him, and I had more or less forgotten him, but when she died I found letters that Stelios had written to her. In one letter he explained that he couldn’t bear to be separated from his son and daughter and had decided to remain in Greece with his family. It was a tragic love story.’

  She glared at Andreas when he gave a snort of derision. ‘Stelios fell in love with my mother but there was no happy ending. After your mother died he came to England to look for Mum, but she had been killed six months earlier. I was struggling to cope with my grief. I had to move out of the house where we’d lived together because I couldn’t afford to pay the rent on my income alone, and Stelios offered me a job as his housekeeper. He helped me when I was at my lowest, and when he was...’ Just in time she stopped herself from revealing that Stelios had been diagnosed with cancer. ‘Your father was lonely and he asked me to marry him.’

  Andreas frowned. ‘Why did you accept his proposal?’

  She was digging herself deeper into a hole, Isla thought ruefully. ‘Stelios is very charming and, as I said, he had been kind to me when I was a child. He promised to look after me.’

  ‘So you regard him as a sort of father figure?’

  ‘Something like that,’ she mumbled.

  Andreas’s eyes narrowed. ‘What about passion? You are a beautiful woman in the prime of your life and you must have a woman’s needs.’

  Isla felt herself blush. ‘Sex isn’t a big deal for me.’

  ‘I don’t believe that.’ He uncrossed his arms and walked towards her. The evocative scent of his aftershave sent a shiver of awareness through her. ‘You say that sex is not important to you but your response to me suggests you are lying. Maybe it’s simply that you haven’t met a man who can unlock your desires?’

  ‘And you think you are that man?’ She tried to sound scornful but her voice was high-pitched and fraught with emotions she was desperate to hide.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Andreas murmured. ‘Your body betrays you so beautifully.’ He lifted his hand and placed his thumb pad over the pulse beating unevenly at the base of her throat.

  Isla caught her breath when he lowered his gaze to the outline of her nipples that had hardened betrayingly beneath her dress. His blue eyes glittered. ‘I know you want me. You will be making a mistake if you marry my father.’

  She felt something sharp and intense coil inside her, a longing that she must deny. ‘Do you find it so hard to accept that not every woman on the planet wants to sleep with you?’

  His hands dropped to his sides. ‘You can deny it as much as you like.’ His voice was harsher, scraping across her skin so that she felt raw. ‘But this is real and you feel it as much as I do.’

  She did not need him to explain what he meant. This was the intangible alchemy that shimmered between them and threatened to burst into flame with a shared look. She had never felt anything like it before. Every cell in her body thrummed with awareness of Andreas, but her reaction to him terrified her.

  She sensed that he could strip away everything she thought she knew about herself if she allowed him to get too close. But from now on she would be on her guard against him, Isla assured herself as she pushed past him and hurried out of the library.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  STELIOS WAS ASLEEP when Isla popped into his suite to check if he needed anything. She made sure that a glass of water and his tablets were within his reach on the bedside table. The evening had drained him but he had insisted on remaining at the party until after the fireworks display at midnight. Only then had she persuaded him to leave Nefeli and her friends to continue celebrating.

  The young people’s voices and laughter drifted up from the tents in the garden and Isla crossed the room and closed the window. Her gaze was drawn to the sea in the distance, dappled by the silver moonlight. It was almost one a.m. but she felt too restless to sleep. She hadn’t seen Andreas again after she’d left him in the library and she’d felt annoyed with herself for scanning the ballroom for him. The truth was that he made her feel alive and without his presence the party had seemed flat.

  She returned to stand by the bed, listening to Stelios’s regular breathing. In the next day or so he would tell his family that he had terminal cancer, and the reason for their fake engagement would no longer be necessary, in private at least. But she had agreed to maintain the pretence of being his fiancée in public until after he’d announced that he was handing over the leadership of Karelis Corp to his son. It was important, Stelios had reiterated, that news of his illness was not made public and he continued to be seen as a powerful leader of the company. Once Andreas became CEO, Isla would be free to return to London and her job at the museum, leaving Stelios to spend his precious final weeks with his family.

  Reassured that he was unlikely to stir for many hours, she left him and went to her own room. It was a relief to kick off her high heels and exchange her ballgown for comfortable jersey shorts and a cotton strap top. She pulled the pins out of her chignon and shook her hair loose, and then slid her feet into leather flip-flops and stepped out into the corridor.

  The staff had finished clearing away after the party and the house was quiet. She paused outside Andreas’s door, wondering if he was asleep or if one of the gorgeous women who had flocked round him at the pa
rty was sharing his bed. Jerking her mind away from images of him and a lover naked and entwined in each other’s arms, she went downstairs and out of the house.

  Avoiding the garden, she followed a path that led directly to the beach, kicked off her flip-flops and walked across the soft sand. The night was warm and still, the air filled with the scent of the white sand lilies which grew in the dunes and a faint salt tang from the sea. Lost in her thoughts, Isla strolled along the shoreline until the lights from the garden were distant and the stars in the inky sky sparkled as brightly as the diamond choker she had returned to Stelios after the party.

  He had tried to persuade her to keep the necklace and the other jewellery she’d worn in her role as his fiancée, but she’d refused. ‘You will keep the ring though, won’t you?’ he’d said when she removed the huge diamond from her finger and placed it in the safe with the choker. ‘You have helped me greatly and I want to give you something to remember me by.’

  ‘I’ll always remember you,’ she had told him softly. Now tears blurred her vision as she stood on the beach, alone beneath the vast heavens.

  ‘I know a cure for insomnia.’ The familiar cynical voice came from behind her. Isla spun round and felt her heart collide painfully with her ribs when she made out Andreas sprawled on a slab of rock further up the beach. Behind him was the cottage she’d noticed when she’d walked this way along the beach once before. In the moonlight she saw that the front door was ajar.

  Andreas sat upright and proffered the bottle he was holding. ‘Bourbon is a cure for most ills, I find.’

  ‘I don’t drink spirits. In fact I rarely drink alcohol at all.’ She bit her lip when she realised how strait-laced she sounded.

  Andreas lifted the bottle to his lips and took a swig. He had discarded his jacket and his bow tie hung loose around his neck. The top few buttons of his shirt were undone and his dark hair fell across his brow, adding to his rakishly sexy appearance. ‘You should try it. Who knows, it might help you to loosen up a bit.’

  ‘The man who killed my mother was found to be four times above the legal alcohol limit for driving.’

  He swore softly. Isla turned her back on him and stared at the mysterious sea. She had no idea why she had told Andreas about her mum. The bereavement counsellor she’d seen a few times had suggested that talking about the accident might help her come to terms with the tragedy, but mostly she buried her feelings deep inside her and put on a brave face to the world.

  ‘What happened?’ Andreas’s voice was suddenly close, and Isla gave a start when she discovered that he had moved silently and was standing beside her.

  She shrugged. ‘Mum was driving home from the call centre where she worked. She’d finished a late shift and the pubs had just closed. The other car hit her head-on. Miraculously, the driver escaped with minor injuries but Mum was killed instantly. In court the driver gave the excuse that he’d got drunk after breaking up with his girlfriend. The judge banned him from driving but didn’t send him to prison because it was a first offence and it was felt that he deserved another chance. I wish Mum had been given a second chance.’ She could not keep the bitterness out of her voice. ‘She was forty-seven when she died.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ The sympathy in Andreas’s husky tone tugged on Isla’s heart. She felt brittle, as if she might shatter. He moved to stand in front of her and slid his hand beneath her chin to tip her face up to his. She closed her eyes, not wanting him to see her emotions, which were still too raw. A tear slipped from beneath her lashes and she felt him gently brush it away with his thumb. ‘When?’

  ‘Two and a half years ago.’

  ‘We have something in common. My mother died two years ago.’

  ‘I know.’ She opened her eyes and saw compassion in his gaze. The gleam of the moon made his face all angles and shadows. ‘Stelios told me that your mother died a few weeks before you nearly lost your own life in a motorbike race. Were you close to her?’

  It was odd how natural it felt when Andreas draped his arm across her shoulders and drew her towards him. Isla knew that she should pull away, and she would in a moment, she told herself. But her aching heart was comforted by this brief connection to another human being.

  ‘No. I was sent away to boarding school at a young age. My grandmother was an American heiress who had married my Greek grandfather, and I spent most school holidays with my relatives in California or I was sent here to Louloudi.’

  Andreas shrugged. ‘I wasn’t close to either of my parents. My father was busy running Karelis Corp and spent a lot of time away from home. When my mother discovered that he had a mistress in England, Stelios told her he wanted to end their marriage.’

  Isla felt uncomfortable even though she knew there was no reason for her to feel guilty about her mum’s relationship with Stelios. ‘Was your mother upset when she found out about the affair?’

  ‘My parents’ marriage had been arranged. It was a business merger rather than a love match. Such things were not uncommon in Greek families years ago,’ he added, catching Isla’s shocked expression. ‘They got on well enough until my mother learned of his infidelity and she was devastated.’

  ‘You said that your parents hadn’t been in love.’

  ‘Stelios did not love my mother but she loved him.’ Andreas exhaled heavily. ‘My father wanted a divorce. I was a headstrong twelve-year-old and when I saw my mother crying I told Stelios that if he left the family I would never speak to him again. I forced him to choose between his English mistress and his heir.’

  ‘He chose you,’ Isla said quietly. ‘Surely it shows that Stelios loved you?’

  ‘He chose me because it was his duty to prepare me for power and leadership of Karelis Corp. But he resented me, especially when I was determined to pursue my own career and lead a different life to the one he had mapped out for me.’

  Isla did not know what to say. She had been so young when Stelios had briefly been a father figure in her life, and of course she’d had no idea that he had a family in another country. It was a little less than two years ago, when Stelios had turned up at the house where she had lived with her mum and said that he was searching for Marion Christie, that Isla had learned the truth.

  A low rumble of thunder pulled her from her thoughts. While she and Andreas had been talking a breeze had whipped up and raindrops the size of pennies stung her bare arms.

  He captured her hand in his and pulled her up the beach. ‘We’ll shelter in the cottage.’

  Within seconds the rain turned to a deluge and by the time they reached the cottage Isla was drenched. She followed Andreas through the front door. ‘Wait here,’ he ordered.

  Moments later a flickering light filled the room as he lit a paraffin lamp and hung it on a hook on the wall. ‘There’s no electricity here,’ he explained. ‘The house is an original cottage from when the island was inhabited by a small community of fishermen and their families. The last family moved to the mainland many years ago and my grandfather bought Louloudi and commissioned the villa to be built. I renovated this place myself.’

  Isla looked around the small sitting room, which had white-painted walls and bleached wooden ceiling beams. The room was simply furnished with a sofa and armchair covered with brightly coloured throws. A tiny kitchen led off the sitting room, and she thought how lovely it would be to prepare a meal on the rustic table with the sound of the waves breaking on the shore.

  She imagined if she and Andreas were lovers relaxing over a leisurely breakfast after a night of passionate lovemaking. She hadn’t lied when she’d told him that sex wasn’t a big deal to her. She’d even wondered if she was frigid. But when she looked at his handsome face and imagined his sensual mouth claiming hers, the ache low in her pelvis became a throb of need that she had never experienced before.

  It was as if she had been in a deep sleep until he had awoken her desire with his kiss. But Andre
as was no Prince Charming, she reminded herself. Being trapped in the cottage with him was dangerous, but he was not the danger. It was the way he made her feel that both terrified and excited her.

  She had prided herself on being cautious and sensible while the other girls she’d shared digs with at university had thrown themselves into love affairs that too often ended badly. Isla had allowed men to think she was unapproachable as a defence mechanism. The legacy of her father’s rejection had made her a coward, she realised with sudden insight. She was twenty-five but she’d never been naked with a man, let alone had a physical relationship.

  Telling Andreas about the accident that had claimed her mum’s life, and seeing Stelios’s health decline, were painful reminders that life was short and she had spent too long mired in hurts of the past. Andreas tempted her to lower her defensive barriers, especially when the fierce gleam in his eyes told her that he found her desirable.

  ‘Storms are fairly common on the coast at this time of year but they tend to blow through quickly.’ His voice pulled Isla from her thoughts and she watched him light a second paraffin lamp. He passed the lamp to her. ‘Feel free to take a look around. There is a gas hob in the kitchen and I can make coffee if you would like some.’

  ‘No, thanks.’ Caffeine at this time of the night—it was actually morning, Isla amended—would not help her to fall asleep when she returned to the villa.

  Holding the lamp aloft, she inspected the pretty blue-and-white-tiled kitchen and the shower room next door. A narrow hallway led to the only bedroom, and here the walls were unpainted, leaving the sand-coloured bricks exposed. The one big window had wooden shutters which were closed. In the centre of the room was a four-poster bed with white voile drapes. She stopped just inside the doorway, her gaze drawn to the bed. The sound of the rain drumming on the roof of the single-storey cottage made the bedroom, lit by the warm glow from the lamp, feel like a safe haven from the elements.