Kidnapped by the Greek Billionaire

by Lyndhurst, Rachel

  Kizzy was relieved to see Dorinda re-emerge from the kitchen, a large earthenware casserole in her arms.

  Dorinda took one look at Kizzy and snapped an accusing glare at Andreas before depositing her burden noisily onto the table between them.

  “Kleftico,” the older woman announced gruffly and left, though not before glancing Andreas a sharp, surreptitious blow with her kitchen towel.

  “I never asked if you were a vegetarian,” Andreas said as he lifted the lid and flinched backward from a blast of steam. “It’s lamb stew.”

  “Sounds good,” Kizzy replied.

  “So, getting back to what you were saying earlier,” he ladled a huge spoonful of stew onto her plate, “I’m curious to know how you ended up at Timi’s. If that’s not too intrusive a question.”

  “Not at all.” He had a perfectly legitimate right to be interested in her rather shabby career profile, and she needed to be professional and pull herself together. “Mum worked for the Antonideses as a waitress after we left my stepfather’s house. She found us a place to live nearby while I studied. I helped out from time to time, and then did more once I’d graduated, to cover Mum when she started to get ill.”

  Andreas noticed her distress. “It’s okay, take your time.”

  “When she died, everything came to light—including the debts that I’d inherited. I couldn’t afford to stay in the flat and had to sell pretty much everything in it. Theo and Ana took pity on me, invited me into their home, and treated me like their own daughter. I paid them back in the only way I could—by working in their restaurant.” She sighed. “Everything’s happened so quickly over the past six months. I owe them a great deal.”

  Andreas shifted uncomfortably in his chair. The Antonides family had made it a lifetime quest to play the Good Samaritan, it seemed. “Then you will no doubt be comforted to know that they want for nothing now. Their kindness over the years has been rewarded and they have the dream retirement they so richly deserve.”

  “Of course I am,” she agreed quickly. “Now maybe you can see why I would never want to hurt them? They’re like parents to me.”

  “Then you will have no hesitation in signing a cast-iron guarantee to that effect.” He smiled with satisfaction as he helped himself to the traditional Greek stew. “I’m sure we can have something drafted up after the weekend and then forget all about that dreadful establishment.”

  Kizzy rested her chin thoughtfully on her hand. “I’m still not clear where you come into all this, why Heliades bought up the ‘dead duck,’ as you described it. Property prices in that area of Portsmouth would never be enough for the fantastic villa they’ve just bought in Cyprus, not to mention the holiday apartment in Lake Como and the cruiser. You said their debts were astronomical.”

  A dark eyebrow arced upward.

  “It’s none of your business now. And I’d hate for us to fall out again if you insist on pursuing this topic.” He poured them both a generous glass of wine. “Now, back to what you were saying earlier, you’re obviously quite informed about real estate. But I’m not convinced you’re up to speed with certain aspects of the law.”

  “I never said I was, but—”

  “Forget the interview, you’ve had your ten minutes.” He smiled lazily and was pleased to note that she seemed to relax a little. “You said you inherited debts from your mother, so presumably you had acted as a cosignatory? You wouldn’t have been a suitable guarantor, surely?”

  Her face was blank.

  “Your mother must have asked you to sign something, maybe passed it off as something else?”

  “No, never. What kind of woman do you think she was? She would never have done such a thing.” Kizzy’s fork fell with a clatter onto the table as she looked at him in horror. “I’ve never signed anything like that. I wasn’t even party to the tenancy agreement. She kept me out of it completely.”

  “Then you can’t have inherited her debts; the law doesn’t work like that. It might be an ass, but it’s crawled some way out of the dark ages. The loan company, the bank, whichever institution lent her the money, would have had to write it off if her estate couldn’t cover it. Presumably nothing much was left?”

  Kizzy nodded slowly.

  “So that’s brilliant news, isn’t it?” Andreas raised his glass triumphantly. “You have no debts, whatever anyone else has told you. A new, footloose life!”

  “They weren’t institutions exactly,” Kizzy murmured.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Conventional lenders weren’t interested in her business, I’m afraid. She took an alternative route—to the darker side of finance.”

  “Loan sharks,” Andreas supplied flatly.

  Kizzy nodded.

  “It’s okay, really it is,” she said hurriedly. “I’ve been gradually paying them off, although I’ve had to borrow from the bank to meet some of the installments—before the interest charges went up again.”

  The still expression on his face made her voice waver.

  “I realize you’ll think me very stupid but if I hadn’t done it that way I’d probably be minus a few body parts by now.”

  She pushed her plate away as the air temperature seemed to drop a few degrees. There was no turning back now—he might as well know everything.

  “On top of all that, Mum borrowed from most of her friends as well. In a way, those debts are worse as there’s a moral obligation to clear them. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I didn’t pay back every penny.” She raised her eyes to the ink-blue night sky above their courtyard table. “I’ll get there eventually, though they’re happy to wait until I’m on my feet again. There are some decent people out there. But the bank and our local gangsters aren’t quite so accommodating.”

  As he wrestled with the shock of her financial situation, Andreas wondered if he would fit into that description. Did Kizzy Dean see him as decent? Probably not, he reasoned, feeling an inexplicable twinge of regret. Yet why should she? No doubt she would lump him into the same uncaring category as her fiscal captors.

  “How much?” he said. “How much do you owe in total?”

  Kizzy’s eyes widened with embarrassment—she wished she hadn’t mentioned it now. “About thirty thousand pounds, five of it to the bank.”

  “Is that all?”

  “A drop in the ocean for you,” Kizzy responded awkwardly. “But it’s going to take me a lifetime to clear it. It goes up another two thousand if I don’t make next week’s installment. So maybe now you will understand my worry about the hotel bill?”

  “Then you must concentrate on the bank and forget about the loan sharks,” Andreas announced firmly. “They can’t get you here, Kizzy, unless you do something stupid and tell them where you are. But credit ratings follow you wherever you go. Forget about the gangsters, they’ll lose interest once they realize their easy target’s gone.”

  “But they threatened to torch Timi’s.”

  Andreas shrugged. “Saving me a few thousand in demolition fees then.”

  “Everything I have is in that place!”

  “It’s only bricks and mortar, Kizzy. It’s run-down, damp and condemned. Let it go.”

  “I meant my stuff, personal things, photographs of my parents, the things that make me who I am. It’s not much but it’s all I have left to prove who I am, where I came from.”

  “It’s all been put in storage already,” Andreas replied, and avoided her bewildered eyes.

  He was beginning to feel moved by the anguish in her voice, the pain Kizzy was clearly feeling at the prospect of losing those few sentimental trinkets, and he didn’t enjoy the sensation one little bit.

  “It’s not that simple,” Kizzy replied with a touch of exasperation. “They know who my mother’s friends are. And mine. One of them has just had a baby and,” her words cracked into a hoarse whisper, “they said they would all get a ‘visit’ if I didn’t pay up or if I told the police.”

  Andreas swore angrily in his own language and
snatched up the cell phone that still lay on the table between them. “How do you normally pay these animals?”

  “They come to the restaurant every Thursday after we close. When I’m on my own.” She sighed miserably. “It has to be cash.”

  Andreas stalked away from the table and made some phone calls out in the quiet darkness of the courtyard. By the time he had finished, Kizzy’s palms were damp and cold, her heart beating sickeningly against her ribs.

  “It’s all sorted.” Andreas resumed his seat and dropped the phone back onto the table.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The sharks will be, let us say, suitably satisfied when they turn up on Thursday. I have a small welcoming party arranged for them.” He flicked her a warning glance. “It is over with regard to them. Funds have been deposited into your account to cover the bank loan and the personal favors you owe on behalf of your mother. There’s also some extra money in there to cover the phone bill I’ve just run up.”

  Kizzy’s head began to swirl. “I don’t know what to say, except thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart. But why would you go to such lengths on my behalf?”

  “Why?” he repeated sharply. “As you said, the money means nothing to me, and all this misery and worry on your part is becoming extremely tedious. We have no need to discuss this sorry episode ever again.”

  He noticed the way she flinched at his harsh words but it was the only way he could explain away his instinctive reaction to her predicament.

  Besides, he didn’t need to justify his actions to anyone—he knew exactly what he was doing. He was going to deal with the mind-numbing attraction to this woman that was throwing him off track and distracting him from his work like nothing he had ever known before.

  He didn’t have time for an affair—there was work to be done, important work, including rescheduling that abortive meeting in London. Then there was Paris and Rome. The sooner he could get her out of his system the better.

  “You should eat more.” He eyed her neglected plate. “You’ll waste away at this rate.”

  “Hardly,” she smiled. “There were always leftovers in the kitchen at Timi’s to pick over, so I’ve got enough reserves to see me through an arctic winter.”

  Andreas pursed his lips thoughtfully. Leftovers…scraps…

  She had been in no better place than the beggar boy in Rhodes, he thought with a growing sense of outrage: a victim of poverty, crime, and callous rejection at the hands of her stepfamily.

  Family.

  He ground his jaw, pushing away bitter memories of his own gnawing hunger and the sight of his sister clutching her tiny belly as she gnawed the morsels he had managed to scavenge for her.

  “I’d hate to see those curves disappear,” he remarked, hiding his pain. “They have quite an interesting effect on me.”

  Kizzy blushed crimson. “I really don’t think—”

  “In fact,” he continued, casually undoing the second button of his shirt. “I’d like to become reacquainted with them again.”

  “That would be highly inappropriate,” Kizzy said. “We were supposed to be talking about work.”

  “For the agreed ten minutes, yes?” He pushed back his chair and stood up, a slow smile forming on his face. “And then I wrote off all the financial worries you could possibly have, so you must be feeling much more relaxed.”

  Kizzy looked up with a startled expression into the seductive umber of his eyes. Awkwardly, she pushed back her chair. “I think I’ll take these dishes into the kitchen and help Dorinda out.”

  “Dorinda has gone for the evening,” he countered. “We’re alone here.”

  Kizzy’s heart was beating so hard, she was sure it must be audible in the thick, charged silence that hung between them.

  “I don’t want to seem ungrateful after everything you’ve done for me. But I’d like to know what job I’m going to be doing here so I can begin to pay you back.”

  “What job do you want?” he asked with a shrug of indifference.

  “This is ridiculous,” she answered him, frustrated. “How am I supposed to answer something like that? I know nothing about your business interests here.”

  “Real estate mainly,” he replied quickly. “Luxury-end sales and renting with the associated finance and administration requirements. My legal and shipping work feeds more out of Rhodes. Then there are a number of other projects in the area.”

  Before she could respond, Andreas had circumvented the table and taken hold of both her wrists. He gently drew her body against the firm strength of his, bringing her so close he could almost taste her quickening breath on his tongue.

  “You can do whatever job you like as far as I’m concerned, Kizzy. Take your pick. Name your salary. None of that matters because I won’t accept a penny back from you anyway. But there is one particular role that would be perfect for you, one I know you would excel at and find fulfilling.”

  Kizzy could only close her eyes and gasp as he lowered his mouth to brush his full lips tantalizingly across hers, tormenting her with a touch as light as a butterfly’s wing. Desire rocketed through her as she felt the burning rigidity of his arousal ease itself suggestively against her navel.

  “You could be my very personal assistant.” His breath grew harsher as he released her wrists and slid his hands around each rounded cheek of her bottom, pulling her even more tightly against him. “And my mistress.”

  Chapter Six

  “What did you say?” Kizzy gasped.

  Andreas smiled. “You heard me,” he replied. “I want you to be my mistress.”

  The serious expression on his face, and the way his eyes had suddenly become hooded and even darker than she thought possible, told her she hadn’t imagined what he had just suggested.

  The growing heat of his body against hers and the now-insistent pulse of his arousal against her belly indicated a very intense male hunger that made her own body respond involuntarily. What had previously been a glowing ember of awareness between her thighs was being fanned into warmth, and her breasts were growing heavy with desire.

  “Previous lovers have been extremely vocal in expressing the pleasure my body can give them.” His tone was teasing. One hand slid up from her rear and underneath her top. “At least, I’ve never had any complaints.”

  Kizzy was beginning to feel delirious with sensation. If the way he kissed her was anything to go by, and the way her body was trembling at his touch, then making love with him would be like nothing she could imagine.

  “I can be generous, Kizzy,” he breathed with deepening urgency. “You won’t be disappointed, believe me.”

  Kizzy breathed out roughly, her mind whirling nonsensically with the intoxication she was feeling. “Andreas.”

  Every brush of his fingertips drew her into wanting more, wanting him to go even further. Yet while each second brought her closer to submitting to the magic spell his body was casting on her, she knew it was madness. Every particle of her body wanted him to carry her off to his bed, but she knew that becoming his lover was not a viable career option. Sliding between her new boss’s sheets could only invite disaster.

  She pushed against his chest and weakened for a second as she felt the thunder of his heart; he was so intensely powerful. “We can’t.”

  “We can,” he whispered and skillfully released the clasp of her bra, exhaling with pleasure. The soft swell of her breasts being freed made the silk of her top whisper invitingly. “It’s what we both want.”

  “Andreas,” she gasped, and tried to push their upper bodies apart. “It’s not what I want!”

  “It isn’t? I think you’re lying to me again, Kizzy.” His voiced dropped to a provocative whisper. He drew a finger across the inflamed bead of her nipple. “You’re really going to ignore me? Is that why you’ve closed your eyes? Why you’re breathing so quickly? Why your heart sounds as if it’s about to burst?”

  Kizzy couldn’t have responded clearly even if his mouth hadn’t been co
axing hers into delicious compliance. His kiss came from nowhere and her body was beginning to melt under his incendiary touch.

  “Yes,” she said as his mouth trailed kisses along the length of her neck.

  Deft fingers dealt with her trouser button and slowly slid down the zip. “That’s better.” A tug resulted in her pants’ slipping to the floor and before she knew what was happening, he had eased her down onto a sofa.

  Kneeling between her parted legs, he probed her mouth greedily until she whimpered with surrender, dissolving beneath him with intense pleasure.

  He pushed her decisively back against the cushions. Molding one hand around her breast, he brushed his fingertips teasingly over the skimpy triangle of silk that covered her sex.

  “This part of you is incapable of deceit,” he murmured with satisfaction and slid his fingers beneath the flimsy fabric to explore the curls between her thighs.

  “Andreas, please.” She wasn’t even sure what she was asking for but her pelvis tilted provocatively. “Please.”

  Her breath quickened and her chest pushed against his hand, her legs parting even farther in invitation.

  “I’ll buy you more,” he growled as he wrenched the gossamer fabric of her panties apart and threw the scrap of material to the floor. “I need to see you.”

  Kizzy gasped as his tongue trailed down her neck, his fingers working expertly on the buttons of her camisole. The heat of their desire became almost too much, and she wrenched at her top, sending tiny buttons flying in the process.

  “Buy me another of those too,” she muttered. She wanted his hand back between her legs.

  Discarding her bra, Andreas ruthlessly dragged one peaked nipple into the heat of his mouth. He drew as much of her in as he could, licking and stimulating her into an almost unbearable state. He then turned his attention to the other breast, until her mouth fell open with raw desire.

  “Is that good?” he teased, watching her flushed face.

  She heard herself moan deeply. It was a sound she didn’t recognize, low and feral. “Here.” She guided his strong lean hand back toward the apex of her thighs and circled her hips against him, silently pleading.