The Greek s Convenient Mistress

by Annie West

  No matter how far she ran. Even if she escaped back to Sydney, she’d never be free of her feelings for him.

  He only had to take her in his arms, seduce her with the incredible tenderness he wielded so easily, and all her defences shattered.

  She sighed into his open mouth as his hand brushed her breast, teasing, tempting, till she pressed forward and felt his palm close round her.

  Her hands locked round the back of his neck and she didn’t protest as he pushed her down against the seat. She sensed the urgency in him as his breathing changed, the rhythm of his heart hammering against hers quickened. His hands grew heavier, more urgent as they stroked her, lingering on the buttons of her shirt.

  Sophie knew what he wanted. Here, in a parked car in broad daylight. And, lord help her, she wanted it too. Just one last time.

  She’d regret it later. But she had no more lies left inside her. She couldn’t pretend any longer.

  He’d won.

  She turned her head and nuzzled the hollow of his neck, breathing deep of the masculine scent of his arousal. His skin was steamy with the energy of sexual excitement.

  ‘Sophie?’ He lifted a hand to her cheek, his thumb brushing the skin below her eye.

  ‘Ah, Sophie mou. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.’ His voice was a hoarse groan of pain.

  She blinked and registered the scalding tears spilling down her cheeks. Tears for her discarded hopes.

  There was a surge of movement. Strong hands, an even stronger body against hers. And then she was sitting up. But not on the luxurious limousine seat. Instead she was cradled on Costas’ thighs, sitting sideways across him, pulled in close against his massive chest, her head resting on his shoulder and his arms wrapped tight around her.

  He was trembling, his whole body tense and shivering beneath hers.

  ‘I hurt you.’ His words were a whisper against her hair. ‘I’m sorry, Sophie. I’ve been a monster. I don’t ever want to cause you pain again.’

  She felt a hard sob well inside her at the sincerity in his husky voice. He might not want to hurt her but he couldn’t help it. It was inevitable when she craved so much more from him than he could give.

  Wordlessly she shook her head and leaned closer to him. Ridiculous to find comfort in the embrace of the man who was at the core of her unhappiness, but so it was.

  ‘I want to take care of you, Sophie. If you’ll let me.’ She felt the deep breath he drew into his lungs. ‘I don’t want you to leave. I want you to stay, with Eleni and me. Always.’

  No. It wasn’t true.

  ‘Marry me, Sophie?’ His hand stroked her hair, gentle and almost tentative. ‘Marry me and live here, with us?’

  For an instant she felt burgeoning joy. And then it was quenched as she registered the implication of his words.

  For a single, glorious moment she’d forgotten that Eleni was the sole reason he’d brought her to Greece. Eleni had to be the only reason he was proposing now. He loved his daughter and he’d do anything, even marry, to make the little girl happy.

  ‘No,’ she whispered when she found her voice.

  ‘No!’ His voice was a muted roar. So much for his unaccustomed humility. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘There’s nothing between us,’ she said and pulled herself away from him. He loosened his hold a fraction so she could sit up straight, but he wouldn’t let her go. Typically stubborn. Well, she could be stubborn too.

  ‘Nothing but sex.’ She stared straight into his night-dark eyes as she said it, hoping he’d believe her.

  ‘How can you say that?’ His brows furrowed in a savage frown that highlighted the severe angles of his face.

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘You’re lying, Sophie.’

  Her gaze slid from his, down to the clean line of his jaw. ‘You can’t keep me here against my will indefinitely.’

  ‘And what about Eleni? You would just leave her, because you are angry with me?’

  ‘I…care for Eleni, very much. But you’ll find someone else to look after her. You don’t need me to do it.’

  ‘You think I want to marry you so you can take care of Eleni?’

  She shrugged, her eyes dropping from his jaw to the precise knot in his dark silk tie. ‘It’s convenient. Eleni likes me. And I remind her of her mother.’ She let her glance skitter to his and then away again. Each word was bitter in her mouth as she forced herself to continue.

  ‘No doubt I remind you of your wife. It’s a neat solution from your perspective. But it’s not what I want.’

  Silence throbbed between them. Sophie held herself taut, perched on his lap, wishing against all common sense that he’d haul her close and tell her she was the only woman for him.

  She really had a self-destructive streak where Costas was concerned.

  ‘I should have told you about Fotini before,’ he said in a deep voice that echoed hollowly between them.

  ‘No!’ That was the last thing she wanted to hear. ‘There’s no need to tell me.’

  ‘There’s every need.’ His arms encircled her, hauling her close again. And, against her best intentions, she felt the heady delight of being held in his embrace. One last, tiny piece of paradise to enjoy before she left.

  ‘That first day when you opened the door to me, it was as if I saw Fotini’s ghost. The resemblance was remarkable.’

  Sophie squeezed her eyes shut, pain slicing through her as he confirmed her fears.

  ‘There were differences between you too. But in my mind I saw you as just like her.’ He dragged in a deep breath, his chest pushing against her. ‘That’s why I refused to trust you at first.’

  What? Sophie struggled to sit up straighter and meet his eyes, but his arms tightened like warm steel about her, locking her against his chest.

  ‘I jumped to the conclusion that you’d been taking drugs. And when I told you about Eleni, when I offered you her legacy as payment to help her, that was my prejudice showing again.’

  He’d been prejudiced against her because she reminded him of his wife? Sophie’s mind buzzed with questions.

  ‘It was only as I got to know you that I realised how wrong I was.’ One hand circled her shoulder, caressing spiralling warmth into her rigid body. ‘I found you were generous, caring. And honest.’ He sighed, his breath a ripple of warmth through her hair.

  ‘You were nothing like Fotini except in the most superficial of ways. And even that physical similarity faded as I yearned for you. Only you. For your bright eyes so fierce and passionate. For the touch of your hand.’

  Dazed, Sophie heard the emotion in his voice, felt it in the tremor that ran through his body and in the brush of his hand on her shoulder. But she couldn’t take it in.

  ‘The night we kissed. Christos! That night I was terrified at how completely you made me lose control. I would have taken you right there in the hallway. I’d never experienced anything like it. I didn’t trust myself not to ravish you. Every argument I’d used to keep my distance disintegrated once I held you in my arms. I had no defence against you. So I behaved brutally to push you away.’

  His hand curled round the nape of her neck and pulled her in even closer. ‘It was all I could do to prevent myself taking advantage of you.’

  Taking advantage? That was how he’d seen their blaze of mutual passion?

  Sophie struggled to loosen his embrace enough to sit back and look into his face. It was sombre, eyes dark with turbulent emotions.

  ‘You insulted me, made me feel like a cheap tart, just because you didn’t trust your libido?’

  He winced as her words burst out. ‘I couldn’t trust myself to protect you any longer.’

  ‘Protect me?’ Her voice rose with outrage at the memory of her pain.

  ‘And were you protecting me when you used me then shoved me aside later like something shameful? Were you protecting me when you accused me of planning an abortion? When you wanted me as a convenience in your bed?’

  ‘You are right,�
�� he said in a voice deep with shame. ‘I am a man without honour. I have treated you appallingly.’

  He drew in a tremendous breath and met her gaze. The emptiness, the ingrained despair she saw there, chilled her to the bone.

  ‘I couldn’t believe what I felt for you,’ he said. ‘It was beyond my experience and I reacted badly. I didn’t want to believe what I felt. Tried to pretend I didn’t believe in love.’

  Love!

  Was this some cruel joke?

  ‘It was only after you rejected me yesterday, after I began to realise how much I’d hurt you and how much I needed you, that I began to understand.’

  Sophie stared at his stern, commanding features, into his lost eyes, and felt her icy outrage disintegrate. He was hurting so badly. And she knew with absolute certainty that pain was not new to him. It was etched with the strength of years.

  ‘Tell me about Fotini,’ she whispered, realising at last that the past was the key to so much. She needed to understand what had happened to make Costas so distrustful.

  He hesitated and she read the reluctance in his expression, the tight control.

  ‘She was beautiful, spoiled, full of life,’ he said in a low voice. ‘It was a marriage of convenience, not love. I wanted a wife and she was pleased to accept me.’

  His lips curved in a mirthless smile. ‘There are some women who see me as a catch.’

  Sophie ignored his last statement and shook her head, amazed at such a cold-blooded approach to choosing a life partner. Apparently her grandfather hadn’t been alone in his belief that marriage and love had nothing to do with each other.

  ‘It seemed enough at the time, Sophie,’ Costas murmured. ‘But then I hadn’t met you.’

  Dazed, she stared back at him. Her body reverberated with the force of the electric connection that sparked between them when he looked at her like that.

  Hope surged within her.

  ‘Fotini liked being the centre of attention. She was used to parties and fun. To an extravagant lifestyle.’

  Sophie watched his brow furrow deep as he remembered. She wanted desperately to ease his hurt.

  ‘When Eleni was born I thought it would help Fotini to settle into married life, give her a purpose that had been lacking in her life: someone other than herself to care for.’

  And what about her husband? She hadn’t cared for him?

  Sophie found herself wondering why her cousin had married. Originally she’d assumed it was because Fotini was in love. Costas was sexy, overwhelmingly masculine, the sort of man any woman would want for herself. But he was also mega-wealthy. Now she wondered if that had been a factor in Fotini’s decision to wed.

  ‘But Fotini suffered from severe depression. And she didn’t want our daughter.’

  Costas turned his head to meet her gaze as her gasp of indrawn breath stretched between them. ‘Her condition was so serious she was hospitalised. And when she came home, despite the medication, her moods were unpredictable, her behaviour extreme. The highest of highs and the darkest of lows.’ He paused, nostrils flared and jaw set.

  ‘The only constant was that she steadfastly refused to have anything to do with Eleni unless forced to.’

  Sophie’s heart clenched. For a little motherless child. For Costas, coping with a baby and a wildly unstable wife. And for her cousin, Fotini. What must they all have suffered?

  ‘It turned out that Fotini’s condition was exacerbated by the alcohol and the drugs her friends had been secretly supplying.’

  ‘You’re joking!’ No one could be that foolish, surely.

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think they realised how serious her condition was. Fotini could be the life and soul of the party when the mood took her. But the night she died they found a mix of alcohol and illegal drugs in her bloodstream. That was why she ran off the road. We were just lucky no one else was with her at the time.’

  ‘Oh, Costas.’ Sophie curved her palm around the clenched tension in his jaw, wishing she could ease the pain that throbbed in his voice. The regret.

  ‘It’s over now,’ he said, looking into her eyes. ‘But you need to know I wasn’t attracted to you because of any resemblance to Fotini. I want you for yourself, glikia mou. Everything about you is unique. You fill my heart in a way I never believed possible before.’

  She met his eyes and saw the blaze of raw emotion there.

  His hands cupped her face. She felt them shake. Those big, capable, powerful hands, trembling against her skin.

  ‘I love you, Sophie. That’s why I can’t let you leave me. I want you with me always. I need you. You’re part of me, part of my soul.’

  Sophie closed her eyes for an instant against the hot, bright welling emotions that seared her. She was almost too scared to believe this was real.

  ‘Agapi mou. I hurt you, I know. It was unforgivable. The act of a beast.’ His ragged voice broke through the last of her barriers. ‘What I feel for you—it scared me. Can you believe that? So like a coward I tried to run away, to pretend it was only lust between us.’

  His thumb brushed her cheek in a soothing caress at odds with the searing fire in his eyes.

  ‘I didn’t believe in such a love between a man and a woman.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps it was the experience of an unhappy marriage. Or maybe it was fear of losing control, of total dependence on a single woman for my happiness. I don’t know, Sophie. All I know is that I refused to believe what I felt. I lied to you and to myself, pretending it was something I could contain. But it was too late. And when you rejected me—’ his voice deepened in pain and his hold on her tightened ‘—I lashed out at you. Unforgivably.’

  Her eyes were brimful of tears. He was a dark blur filling her vision. She shook her head, too choked to speak. But her hands spanned his jaw, slid lovingly over his cheeks, his lips, his brow, needing the sensation of his hot flesh to anchor her in this spinning world of sudden, blazing happiness.

  She leaned close. ‘I love you too, Costas. So much. I tried to hide it from you—it was tearing me apart to leave you.’

  ‘Sophie!’ His voice, like black velvet, caressed her. ‘We’ll never be apart again, I promise.’

  And then she couldn’t speak, but this time because his lips were on hers, tenderly urgent. She opened for him and the world spun away.

  It was an age later that she surfaced, panting as she dragged in oxygen. She felt so different. As if the shadows of the past had been banished by the magic of what she and Costas shared.

  She smiled up into his face and he responded with a blazing grin that lit his features in a way that sucked the newly acquired oxygen straight from her lungs. He really was gorgeous when he looked at her like that.

  ‘You’ve sealed your fate, Sophie. You’re mine now.’ There was no doubting the possessive gleam in his eyes. And Sophie didn’t mind one bit.

  She stroked the hard angle of his jaw, revelling in the sensation of his warm skin against hers.

  ‘And you’re mine.’ She smiled and watched him swallow as she feathered her fingertips over his mouth.

  ‘Sophie? There’s something else you need to know.’

  She experienced a moment’s dread as she read uncertainty in his dark eyes. Then she squared her shoulders. Whatever it was, she could cope, now that she knew he loved her.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Eleni. She—’

  ‘You said she was making a good recovery!’

  ‘She is. The doctors are astounded at how well she’s doing. The prognosis is very good.’ He paused and she saw the pulse at the base of his neck quicken.

  ‘The reason you were the only compatible donor we could find…’ He hesitated and Sophie curled her fingers around his hand.

  ‘When we did the initial blood tests the doctors discovered that no one in my family would be a match. Fotini was pregnant before we married. Eleni is no blood relation of mine.’

  His dark gaze met hers and she read the question in it. ‘Nevertheless I am her father. I love
her and she will always be my daughter.’

  For a long moment Sophie sat in stunned silence, absorbing the implications of his words. The story of deceit, betrayal and, above all, love.

  What a man her Costas was! How strong. How generous and loving.

  ‘All that matters is that you love me, Costa mou, just as I love you.’

  ‘And you’ll marry me? You’ll even take on another woman’s child?’ There was an anguished edge to his voice and she knew it was uncertainty that held him so unforgivingly in its grip. Sophie slid her hands to his broad shoulders, massaging at the tightness there.

  ‘Eleni will be our daughter,’ she corrected.

  He stared back, his face a sombre mask of slashing, powerful lines, his eyes burnished bright by emotion.

  ‘I don’t deserve you, Sophie. I know that. But I will spend my life making you happy.’

  He smiled slowly, in a way that sent a skitter of excitement through her. She read mischief in the sudden twinkle of black eyes. ‘And I will take enormous care to ensure you never change your mind. Starting immediately.’

  He slid his hands round to the front of her shirt, his fingers deft and quick as they flicked open each button in turn.

  ‘Costas—no!’ She darted an appalled glance over his shoulder, fearful of seeing someone, Yiorgos maybe, outside the car. But the glade was deserted, except for some bird trilling in the shadows of the ancient olive trees.

  Costas grinned as he slipped her shirt from her shoulders in a single, easy move and reached for the clasp of her bra.

  ‘Sophie—yes!’ He nuzzled at her breasts as he stripped her bra away and took her warm flesh in his hands. ‘Yes and yes and yes!’

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-3430-1

  THE GREEK’S CONVENIENT MISTRESS

  First North American Publication 2009.

  Copyright © 2006 by Annie West.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.