Kidnapped by the Greek Billionaire

by Lyndhurst, Rachel

  “What’s there for me to be unhappy about?” Kizzy took a deep breath of the breeze that coasted up from the bay and cooled her skin beneath the canopy of a tiny rooftop restaurant. “I’ve just had the most delicious meal, the view is amazing, and my indulgent boss has cleared all my debts. It’s a new beginning for me and I’m very excited.”

  Andreas quirked up an eyebrow. “I’m glad to hear it. You’re obviously having a better day than I am.”

  “Is it so bad?” She tipped her head sympathetically to one side and then averted her eyes before letting the next few words slip out. “Was it bad news this morning?”

  “Yes and no. Liz is in fact resigning her position as office manager and leaving Lindos, which is a huge shame—she’s very good.” He pursed his lips together and considered the bubbles that were rising to the top of his drink. A slight edge crept into his voice. “But she’s going to have a baby with the man she says she loves, so what more can one say?”

  “I see.”

  He shrugged and looked distractedly away toward the nearby acropolis that rose high into a vibrant blue sky. “I can only wish her the best and hope it all works out the way she thinks it will.”

  “You don’t sound too convinced,” Kizzy replied cautiously.

  “I’m not. They’ve got no money saved, no qualifications, and no property, but they have love.” He tipped the glass of beer to his mouth. “They seem to think that’s all they’re going to need.”

  A waiter drifted close to their table and silence fell for a few seconds before Andreas flicked her an uncomfortable, rigid smile.

  “Ridiculous, isn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Me neither, and that is quite simply because there is no such thing as love. The notion is a convenient myth that’s developed over millennia to facilitate social control and stability—just like all those crazy religions out there. Oh, and throw in a marriage vow and it makes it a lot easier for a guy to get regular sex as well.” He frowned at the pink tinge on Kizzy’s cheeks. “I just hope Liz knows what she’s getting herself into. It beats me how a girl can get pregnant by accident these days—there’s no excuse for it really.”

  “You’re not the marrying kind then, judging by what you just said?” She couldn’t help but register the shocked expression on his face. “I mean, as you said, you don’t need to these days. Unless you’re very traditional or religious or—” She could feel she was digging herself deeper and deeper into a very big hole of embarrassment. “Or for financial reasons.”

  She coughed away her discomfiture and began to fiddle with the stem of her wineglass, anything to avoid the glowering expression that dominated his features. She should just shut up.

  “Marriage?” He lifted his eyes skyward and let out a bitter laugh. “Once was quite enough, trust me.”

  His jaw lowered to meet her gaze with ultimate precision, and she felt as if she were being sucked into the eye of a dark storm.

  “The institution is pointless—it didn’t stop my father from being a serial philanderer and making my mother’s life a humiliating misery. Why they never divorced is beyond me. Still,” his bottom lip tightened with disgust, “my mother’s dead and the old goat’s so senile now he’s oblivious to the damage he did. As for my own taste of wedded bliss? It was a living hell. So your answer is a definite no. I’d never, ever do anything that stupid a second time.”

  His mum had died too…and he’d been married…

  Kizzy felt a strange sensation of renewed loss and disappointment. She quickly looked over to his left hand to confirm the absence of a wedding ring. He must have loved his mother, but he clearly had no feeling left for the woman he had once cared about enough to marry. Not because he loved her, of course—he’d made his feelings known about that particular notion. But his revelation was creating more questions than answers in Kizzy’s mind.

  What had happened?

  Where was his wife now?

  Had there been any children from the marriage?

  Kizzy was sickened by the pounding of her heart as unbidden images forced their way to the front of her mind: Andreas in his dark, sartorial suit, smiling into the face of his beautiful, ivory-swathed bride; then the image of him naked and determined, rolling over to caress his wife’s slender limbs beneath crisp, white sheets; the sable, downy head of their baby in the crook of his protective arm…

  Kizzy shook her head to banish the madness that seemed to be consuming her and said the first thing that came into her head, just to change the subject.

  “I’ve got good news.” She smiled as brightly as she could when he quirked up an eyebrow to indicate she should continue, and suddenly realized there was no going back now that she had started. “I can move out of your villa immediately. Get out from under your feet. That’s good, isn’t it?”

  Andreas glared at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m moving in with Angie,” she said, straightening her back to reinforce her determination. “She told me that Liz’s room has been empty for weeks and the rent’s all paid up to the end of the month, so my first few weeks will be free. Isn’t that lovely of her? Of course, I’ll show my appreciation in some other way once I’ve been paid. Cook a few meals, bring home the odd bottle of wine—”

  “Stop right there.”

  Andreas clenched a fist under the table as he battled against the very real but uncharacteristic urge to raise his voice and show how very angry he was feeling. Still smarting from the freshly resurrected and sour memories of his marriage, his failed marriage, he was now faced with the unpleasant situation of having control slipping from his fingers once more.

  Women! Give them more than a few minutes together and they would be plotting and planning against you before you could do a thing to stop it.

  Well, stop it he would—this was not how things should be happening and not part of his strategy for getting Kizzy Dean where he wanted her. And that was very firmly installed in his bed with the door closed to the outside world.

  “I did not give you permission to start making clandestine arrangements behind my back.” His nostrils flared with irritation. “I will not permit it.”

  “It’s too late for that, I’m afraid,” Kizzy replied, an uncomfortable dryness at the back of her throat. “I’ve already given Angie my word. And she’s turned down all the other offers she had in favor of mine.”

  Andreas sliced a hand through the air as if trying to bat off an annoying insect. “Leave Angie to me. She will fully understand that an urgent change in circumstances means her new roommate won’t be moving in for a while.”

  He leaned his elbows on the table, knotted his fingers tightly together, and glowered at her as his brain went into overdrive, revising his previous plans for a romantic dinner for two, a barefoot stroll in the moonlight, and a magnum of his favorite champagne.

  “It’s Friday afternoon. There’s no way I can realistically speed up production of our contract and have it ready for signature today. I e-mailed the bare bones of it to my chief executive in Rhodes this morning while you were asleep, but these things take time to do properly.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing.” His eyes flashed dangerously. “I warned you at the start that I wasn’t letting you out of my sight until there were some cast-iron guarantees between us. Nothing has happened to alter that.”

  “So I am a prisoner, after all,” Kizzy stated quietly. “I suppose I should be grateful you haven’t locked me up in that tower of yours.”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic!”

  Andreas pushed himself out of his seat and stood against the low wall of the restaurant terrace with his back to her, his fists thrust into his pockets as he stared out toward the open sea.

  She was right, he was forced to admit inwardly. To all intents and purposes she was a prisoner in that he wasn’t prepared to allow her total freedom for a few days.

  But he had to keep an eye on her, didn’t he? For the Ant
onideses’ sake.

  Who was he trying to kid?

  Kizzy Dean was not going to run off and call the Antonideses at the first opportunity and he damn well knew it. He also knew that the legal contract he had been insisting on was completely unnecessary to ensure Kizzy’s side of the deal. It had been an excuse—an excuse to keep her within his reach until he could seduce her into his bed and work her delectable body right out of his overheated system.

  “You want guarantees too, don’t you?” he demanded nonetheless. “Without some form of legal contract, there’d be nothing to stop me from breaking my side of the bargain and abandoning you here with nothing.”

  “But you wouldn’t.”

  He turned to face her. “What makes you so confident of that?”

  Kizzy wasn’t quite sure what had made her say such a thing, but her mind was instantly drawn back to his office staff, to Dorinda and Stephanos. Their instinctive reactions to Andreas were something no amount of stick-wielding could enforce or money could buy. They were loyal, respectful, and affectionate even.

  “I trust you.”

  “You trust me.” He shook his head skeptically. “I may have overestimated your intelligence. It’s not safe to trust anyone, Kizzy. Especially not men like me.”

  Men as flawed and tarnished and warped as me. Men who would deceive and go against their own principles to get a woman like you into bed…

  “But you’re young. You’ll learn. Sadly.”

  “You’re absolutely right, Andreas. In fact, I imagine you’re rarely wrong about anything.”

  “Never,” Andreas said.

  He let her barbed remark pass without rebuke but that didn’t mean it hadn’t hit home. It had, and to his surprise, it hurt. Hurt more than it logically should.

  Clearly he came across as arrogant and overbearing. And her cold reaction was no more than he deserved. But that little bit of fire she had just shown proved she had a tough inner core, a personality that could give free rein to her inferno of a libido.

  “Getting back to practicalities,” he announced in a neutral tone. “Since you are so keen to spread your wings, I’ve decided we need to do some work on your career plans, so they can be properly built into the contract. I have a few possibilities in mind but I need to focus without external distraction. It’s just too busy here—too many demands. I need to attend personally to a number of other matters before an important UN meeting in Paris next week.”

  “So we’re going away for a couple of days until the legal documents are ready. It’s the only sensible way forward at this point.” Slowly, his eyes followed a swallow’s black silhouette across the skyline. His voice was deliberately nonchalant. “Besides, you’re looking tired, so I’ve arranged a luxurious weekend on a private island. I’m hoping that should put the color back in your cheeks.”

  Chapter Eight

  The room Andreas had shown her to, her room was an exquisite, understated palette of ivory-painted floorboards, cream plasterwork, and the snowiest white linen she had ever seen. What she had encountered of his island retreat so far was breathtaking, but what exactly was she supposed to do in her own little piece of this heaven?

  Their departure from Lindos had been rapid and ruthlessly efficient to the extent that her unwrapped boxes of new clothing had yet to be delivered. Andreas had insisted that they fly to the island by helicopter immediately before the light started to fade, having arranged for their luggage to follow on by sea, so she couldn’t even while away the time with unpacking.

  Kizzy moved toward the French windows that stood open, invitingly, onto a balcony with a delicate black wrought-iron rail, and paused for a moment to run her hands across the rough stone that framed it. Its cold grayness contrasted beautifully with the thick, buttery cover surrounding it and the apricot blue of dusk outside.

  Her eyes drifted to one of the imposing black picture frames that hung on either side of the door. Beneath the glass was a watermarked piece of fabric embroidered with a sweeping arc of simple flowers tied at the stem with a blue bow. Its bright ensemble of clashing colors and incorrect botanical structure was as delightfully naïve as the sepia photograph it surrounded was severe.

  A stiff, unsmiling woman sat with hands primly folded in the lap of her black floor-length dress. Behind her was an equally stern, mustachioed man in a suit who was gripping a bewildered-looking child in a white dress on his knee.

  “Those were the days.”

  Kizzy jumped as Andreas’s words cut through the silence and turned to see him leaning nonchalantly against the doorjamb, his powerful shoulders almost filling the width of the frame.

  “They all look terrified,” she said, and glanced back at the framed photograph. “Are they family?”

  “No.” He eased himself upright and took a few steps into the room, bringing him uncomfortably within touching distance. “If you look closely there are a couple of lovebirds hiding in the flowers, not the sort of symbolism most of my dreadful ancestors would think to incorporate. They’re descendants of the original owners, I believe. There was a ton of old stuff lying around when I bought this place. Most of it had to go, but a few pieces, like that one, I’ve kept. Lends a certain ambience to the building, don’t you think?”

  “Definitely,” Kizzy agreed, folding her arms across her chest and gripping tightly onto her elbows, a defense against the proximity of his body. She didn’t dare turn around and face him, he was just too close, and one more lungful of his fresh scent would be her ruin.

  There had been no mention yet of the absurd “mistress” proposition from the night before—he had clearly given up quite quickly on that idea—so it was vital that she didn’t even think about how much she wanted to kiss him.

  In a physical sense, at least, Andreas was everything she could ever have imagined her perfect man to be. Just the memory of his touch made shivers run like wild electricity up and down her spine until she could hardly think straight.

  She only prayed he couldn’t hear the catch in her breath.

  They were together in her bedroom.

  Alone.

  “Can I assume you have recovered from my handling of the helicopter?” Andreas asked.

  He reached around her to close the French doors, brushing his forearm against her bare shoulder as he did so.

  Kizzy felt her eyes flutter shut for a second in direct reaction to his touch. She was forced to moisten her dry lips with the tip of her tongue before she could reply. “I can’t pretend I enjoyed it all that much—very noisy.”

  “I’m sorry about that. I was very keen to get here before dark, that’s all.”

  “You’ll have to excuse my nervousness, Andreas. You’re used to all this, but for me it’s quite overwhelming.” Kizzy continued to stare out of the window, willing the pounding of her heart to ease up. “Yachts, jets, helicopters—I guess that just leaves me the hideously expensive sports car to get accustomed to, right? No, don’t tell me—Lamborghini? Ferrari?”

  “Neither of those.”

  She turned to face him but her playful smile faltered at the shadowy expression on his face. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—I just assumed it was all part of the image.”

  “The idle, reckless, playboy billionaire image, you mean?”

  “I suppose so,” she replied. “I didn’t mean to be rude, but you obviously drive something, so I assumed it would match everything else about you.”

  “Such as my ego and heartlessness?”

  Kizzy looked away, embarrassed. He clearly hadn’t forgotten the vitriol she hurled at him before she discovered the truth about the little beggar boy in Rhodes.

  “It was wrong of me to say that about you,” she mumbled. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said smoothly. “It’s quite refreshing to have someone tell me what they think of me—even if it isn’t palatable. I appreciate your honesty, Kizzy.”

  “Besides,” he continued, “I’ve given up driving. Lindos village is a World Heritage Site and veh
icles aren’t permitted here so I couldn’t anyway. I prefer sailing down from Rhodes rather than taking the road. It’s also a lot easier to get chauffeured about when I’m overseas—not driving is better all around.”

  He let out a low breath.

  “But my last car was a Lamborghini. It was the most beautiful piece of machinery I have ever seen and the first expensive item I bought for myself once the serious money started coming in. But,” and his whole body seemed to twist in on itself in response, “it wasn’t such a pretty sight when it was written off.”

  “Showing off with handbrake turns, were you?”

  “No—my little sister crashed the bloody thing,” he replied starkly. “Callista was already dead when it caught fire. Or that’s what the inquest said.”

  Kizzy felt a sensation similar to a gigantic boulder plunging to the bottom of her stomach and her mouth dropped open into a silent, painful apology. She took a hesitant step toward him, then stopped herself as she saw the raw emptiness in his face, the way his shoulders were hunched around his folded arms.

  “I’m so very sorry,” she began. “It was a thoughtless thing for me to say—”

  “That’s okay. No need to feel awkward about it, Kizzy.” Calmly, he unfolded his arms. “It’s not something I usually discuss, so we’ll let the subject drop. But you could always make it up to me if you wanted to.”

  “Name it,” Kizzy replied quickly, then realized how dangerous such an open invitation could be to a man like Andreas Lazarides.

  He leaned back against the wooden post of the bed behind him and tipped his head toward the ceiling for a moment as though deep in thought.

  The seconds ticked agonizingly away. It was almost as if he were deliberately calculating the exact period of silence it would take to stretch Kizzy’s nerves to the limit.

  “Kiss me,” he said finally.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You heard me,” he replied coolly. “Kiss me like you did last night and I’ll forget every tactless word you just said.”