by Abby Green
He bent down and pressed his lips to hers and then he said, ‘It’s not soon enough, agapi mou.’
And Sophy knew, as Apollo joined his body to hers, that he meant every word, and that today was the start of a new life. For them and for ever.
EPILOGUE
Three and a half years later, Krisakis
‘MAMA, LOOK! I’M SWIMMING!’
Sophy stood up from the lounger with a slight huff of effort. She smiled and waved at her two-and-a-half-year-old son Ajax, who admittedly looked as if he was splashing more than swimming, being tugged along in armbands by his father.
She plonked a sunhat on her head and went over to the edge of the pool, which was just one of the luxurious features of the Achilles Villa in the Krisakis Resort, which had opened a couple of years ago. This was the villa Sophy had suggested building at the top of the resort and it was the most sought-after for its views and privacy.
As Sophy had predicted, they were inundated with visitors looking to escape the far busier islands around them, and Krisakis was thriving and growing all the time.
Sometimes they themselves needed to escape, and they went out on the yacht that Apollo had bought at the auction those few years ago. He’d named it Little Flame, much to Sophy’s delight.
She went down on her haunches. ‘You are doing so well, my love. Papa is a good teacher, isn’t he? He taught me how to swim too.’
Ajax, dark-haired and a handful, as only a child of Apollo could be, broke into giggles. ‘Papa teaching Mama to swim—that’s silly! You’re a grown-up!’
Sophy saw Apollo’s smirk and splashed some water at him. He said warningly, ‘You’ll pay for that, Kyria Vasilis.’
She was Kyria Vasilis again. Except officially this time. They’d got married here on Krisakis in the small Greek Orthodox church. The inevitable media interest in Apollo marrying his widow’s twin sister had been handled well by his PR team and it had quickly faded from the news pages.
Sophy stood up now and undid the wraparound kaftan, dropping it to the ground. She saw the way Apollo’s eyes narrowed on her and the inevitable flame in their depths.
Her own body—so attuned to his—tingled and fizzed with anticipation. Lord knew, she shouldn’t be feeling sexy. She was eight months pregnant and the size of a small hippo but nothing was capable of diminishing their desire. Even Ajax’s arrival had been precipitated by Apollo’s very sensual brand of trying to ‘hurry him along’ when she’d been overdue with him.
She went over to the steps that led down into the pool and sat down, relishing the feel of the water cooling her sun-warmed skin. Apollo left Ajax splashing happily in the shallow end and came over to where she was, sliding his arms around her and stealing a kiss. Something they never got away with for long in front of their son.
He pulled back and sat beside her, putting a hand over her belly. The baby kicked. It was a girl. But they were keeping it a secret from Ajax. She put her hand over her husband’s and they looked at each other, a wealth of emotion flowing between them.
They’d already been tested by grief when Sophy had lost their second baby at about four months to a miscarriage, almost a year ago now. But that experience had only made their bond even stronger.
Ajax’s voice suddenly piped up with an imperious, ‘Mama, come here! I want to show you something.’
Sophy smiled wryly at Apollo and moved into the water, swimming lazily over to her son, the way her husband had taught her.
Apollo looked at his wife and son playing and his heart was so full he didn’t know how it didn’t burst. But it didn’t. It just grew and expanded every day. And in another month or so it would expand a lot more.
And what he’d found, thanks to his love for his wife and his family, was that it was always infinitely better to make love the goal. And not self-protection. Because the thought of not experiencing this beauty and love and joy… Well, that was more terrifying than anything.
A Hidden Heir to Redeem Him
Dani Collins
She kept their child hidden…
Now the secret’s out!
Valentino Casale is outraged to find Kiara kept their daughter a secret from him for two years! Forever branded by his own illegitimacy, the hardened billionaire wants to do things differently…
Kiara could never regret the consequence of her one delicious night with Val. Even if he turned out to be every bit as coldhearted as their night was hot! Yet behind Val’s reputation is another man—revealed only in their passionate moments alone. Could she give that man a second chance?
In May of 2012 my editor Megan Haslam
phoned me with an offer for my first sale to
Mills & Boon. Eight years later, this is my thirty-fifth
title. The longer I do this, the more I appreciate the
entire team at Mills & Boon—particularly Megan.
Thank you for this career, Megan.
I absolutely couldn’t have done it without you.
CHAPTER ONE
VALENTINO CASALE HAD long ago hardened himself against useless things like feelings, but he found himself irritated by the congested streets of Athens.
Traffic was his driver’s problem, not his, but he shifted restlessly, acknowledging the real pea beneath his mattress. Returning to Greece grated on him. Being sent here as a child had always felt like a punishment and still did. And to be thrust into the space between his father’s money and his mother’s grappling for it? That was the equivalent of being thrown into a cage with a hungry tiger.
So no, he was not pleased to be here.
This will be the last time, he assured himself with a grim look at the bustling midmorning streets. At least his father wasn’t here. There was a silver lining.
If he had feelings, Val supposed he would be experiencing grief or what some called “closure.” Since receiving the news that Nikolai Mylonas had died two days ago, however, he had experienced no emotions at all, not even relief. His father would be cremated and his ashes interred on his island property. In lieu of a service that no one would attend, Nikolai’s two sons and their mothers were requested to appear in person at the reading of his will.
Val had rejected any share in his father’s wealth two decades ago. He’d built his own fortune off his own oiled back, grazie. He had even supplied his mother with a healthy allowance in hopes she would quit lusting after Niko’s money, not that it had worked.
She had continued to take Niko’s occasional checks and remained convinced that her son was entitled to all of his father’s fortune. If she absolutely had to, she would settle for his receiving exactly 50 percent.
Val still didn’t want it, as he had reiterated to his father’s lawyer when the man had called to set up this meeting. Whatever he stood to inherit could be signed over to his mother if it couldn’t be refused.
There were stipulations, he had been informed, that demanded the presence of all parties before anything could proceed.
The king was dead, but his legacy of manipulation lived on.
And yes, Val’s mother was mentioned, the lawyer had hurried to state, so it was in Val’s interest to show up and keep the wheels turning.
Who cared where the money went?
Evelina Casale, that was who. She cared about Niko’s money above all things. She most especially cared how much she would receive as compared to Niko’s ex-wife, Paloma. If the other woman was bequeathed so much as one euro more, well, Val supposed he would finally meet his half brother with pistols at dawn.
Another silver lining—
“Stop,” he commanded, lifting his head off the back of his seat as his gaze caught the frontage of an art gallery. “Let me out here.”
As he stepped from the car, his phone dinged with another text from his mother, informing him she had arrived in the lobby.
She could wait. They all could.
&nbs
p; He shoved his phone back into his pocket and crossed the street. Habit propelled him. For three years he had been entering every gallery he glimpsed, no matter what else was on his agenda. No matter if he’d been in the same shop days before.
Perversely, he was forever on the hunt for his own naked form and was always disappointed not to find it.
It didn’t escape him that if he had wanted to embarrass his father with public nudes, he could have taken a photo down his drawers and posted it online years ago. Hell, in his heyday Val had modeled underwear so sheer and tight he might as well have been bare-assed, so any barb in such an act was long lost. At this point an unknown artist capitalizing on his notoriety by circulating a “classy” rendition of his junk was pure, pretentious vanity—which he was probably guilty of along with a multitude of other sins.
Alas, today was one more fruitless search.
He smirked at his own joke, but his humor was quickly overshadowed by aggravation. He ought to be pleased when he failed to find himself. Everyone used him to whatever extent they could. In this case he had blatantly given his permission to be exploited, but this one struggling artist hadn’t done so.
Why not? It could have been the break she needed. As three years passed, however, and he failed to glimpse anything like her work again, a niggling concern had begun roiling in him that something had happened to her.
Why that might bother him, he couldn’t fathom. His own father had died, and he had continued with the tennis game his mother’s call with the news had interrupted.
There had been something about that young artist, though. She’d been both mature and self-reliant, yet naive. Charmingly open with her opinions and genuinely curious of his, unafraid to challenge his assumptions or have her own views picked apart. She hadn’t taken anything from him, either. Not even the money he’d left for the sketch he’d ripped from her book and tucked into his briefcase so he wouldn’t lose or crumple it.
His phone buzzed again. His mother was worried she might run into Paloma and Javiero before Val arrived.
As if Val would allow them to hurry him along. He didn’t respond, only moved leisurely through the gallery, skimming his gaze across landscapes and abstracts, cats and fruit bowls and a view through a window that bore only the vaguest resemblance to the framed sketch hanging in his bedroom. The execution on this one wasn’t nearly as skilled, and the signature was not the KO he sought.
One of these days he would go to Ireland and poke around their galleries, see if he was hanging out there.
He smirked again at his double entendre, but his glimmer of amusement fell away as he walked the final few blocks through blistering heat into the ninth circle of hell, otherwise known as the Mylonas office tower. He hadn’t been here since, well, it must have been right before he’d flown to Venice three years ago, acting on a social media post that his father’s rival was vacationing there.
Val wondered yet again whether he might have backed out of his ill-fated marriage if he’d come back to his hotel room after that initial meeting and found his unassuming artist still in his bed, rather than finding all the cash he’d had in his wallet still in its tidy stack on the night table, her and her sketchbook gone.
She’d been guileless and refreshingly oblivious to his position and money. He’d been utterly relaxed as she sketched him. It seemed ridiculous to say he had felt “safe.” He was a powerful man with strength and position and money, rarely at a disadvantage, but it had been a surprising relief that he hadn’t felt a need to keep his guard up with her.
He hadn’t fully appreciated that until much later and to this day, he was annoyed with himself that he’d left her that morning, giving her a chance to disappear without a trace. He hadn’t caught her last name and, with his father’s ultimatum still ringing in his ears, he’d gone through with his plan to firmly divest of the old man once and for all.
That ruthless move had been the last time he’d allowed emotion to drive him. The “marry in haste” cliché had its roots in truth. He’d found no satisfaction in his marriage, only a sexless existence with a woman whose interests were not his own. At least their divorce was finalized, and he could turn the page on that chapter in his encyclopedic collection of sordid mistakes.
“Take your time,” his mother said as he came through the revolving doors. She gave him a dismayed once-over. “Would a suit have killed you?”
“A suit would have implied this meeting was important to me.”
She tsked and moved toward him from the waiting area, almost as tall as he was and still catwalk-thin at fifty-eight—though she would slay anyone who tried to claim she was a day over fifty-one. Of course, that would have made her pregnant at eighteen, when she’d been gracing the cover of swimsuit issues, but she reserved her math skills for counting calories and money.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Casale. I’m Nigel,” one of his father’s minions said. “May I escort you to the meeting room?” He waved them toward the bank of elevators.
Val turned and a megajolt of electricity shot through him as he was smacked in the eyes by the large oil behind the security desk.
“Where did that come from?” he demanded.
It hadn’t been there three years ago. He had never seen it before in his life. The seascape framed by a window was unfamiliar, although the view itself had to be Greece. The blend of colors was new to his eyes, but they were gloriously understated while providing infinite texture and depth. Something in the composition was deeply familiar to him, too. The waft of the curtain in the breeze was reminiscent of the drape of a charcoal shirt over the back of a chair.
The painting was so bizarrely evocative of her, she might as well have stood next to him, whispering in his ear, telling him that she felt safe in here, but the wildness beyond called to her. This painting was a threshold of sorts, as she contemplated moving into a new world filled with uncertainty, but also with vast and glorious new experiences.
“You can’t come back here, sir.”
He brushed past the security guard and examined the signature. Not the KO on his own sketch, but Kiara. His skin tightened all over his body.
“Where did you get this? I want to speak to this artist.” He didn’t ask himself why, but when the security guard only gave a baffled shrug, Val wanted to punch him.
“Um, sir?” Nigel the minion offered a perplexed look. “Miss O’Neill is upstairs. She arrived for your meeting ten minutes ago.”
“For the reading of my father’s will?” His scalp prickled. The sensation kept going, lifting a sharp tingle along the sides of his neck and running the length of his spine. His gut knotted and his groin twitched. His skin felt too tight for the heat that was suddenly pressurizing inside him, crystalizing the carbon in his body tissue to diamond hardness.
“Who is she?” his mother asked at a distance.
Val barely heard her over his harsh laugh of outraged, gallows humor.
“Someone who worked for Dad.” How had he missed that? Blinded by his own libido, he supposed. Cursing himself, he said, “Yes. By all means. Take me to her. I. Can’t. Wait.”
Kiara O’Neill could tell that Niko’s lawyer, Davin, was trying to put her at ease with his incessant small talk, but it wasn’t working. Maybe he thought he was charming her? They’d met several times in the past three years and he had invited her to dinner more than once, but her priorities were always her daughter and her art, in that order. If she squeezed in an evening of wine and a rom-com with her best friend, Scarlett, she considered her life complete.
Trying to fit a man into her narrow world would only complicate her to-do list. Besides, the last time she’d gone on a date, she’d wound up pregnant.
And the man in question would enter this boardroom any second.
Her whole body was soaked in a clammy sweat, her mind incapable of holding a sensible thought, let alone a conversation. Her belted dress and
flowing kimono jacket, chosen so carefully to be unobtrusive and comfortable while offering an impression of quiet confidence, felt constrictive. Her unsettled stomach was full of snakes, and the feminist inside her who had happily told men to talk to her hand for three years was wringing said hands like an adolescent girl when the grad ball was announced. The cute boy was coming down the corridor and she didn’t know if she wanted him to notice her or not.
She kept thinking she should have done something different with her hair. Straightened it, maybe. She should have worn more makeup, to disguise her apprehension. Or maybe not so much, so she didn’t look so…polished. Niko had liked her to look and sound and act a certain way and she’d gone along with it because, ugh, reasons, but this wasn’t who she was.
Deep down she was still a mixed race orphan from Cork’s dodgiest neighborhood. Scarlett would point out she was actually a mother and an artist, but Kiara was faking her way through both of those things so she wasn’t sure they counted.
Val Casale had seemed like a smart man. She suspected he would see straight through to the fraud she was, no matter how she presented herself.
Although, he had seemed to think her work had genuine merit. When she had demurred, he’d said, “You really don’t know who I am, do you?”
She hadn’t. Not until much later.
It was all coming home to roost now, though.
She concentrated on not licking the lipstick off her mouth. Her throat was dry, making it impossible to swallow. All morning her heart rate had been picking up to a panicked speed, then petering out in a cold flush, leaving her light-headed and vaguely exhausted. She worried she would faint any second and reminded herself yet again to breathe. She didn’t want to be stroked out on the floor when Val walked in.
She wanted to text Scarlett to hurry back from the ladies’ room, but she had already set her phone to silent and tucked it into her clutch. Pulling it out midconversation would be rude.